BWW Blog: Amanda Bohlmann - Putting Together a Show on a Small Stage

When deciding on what show to do for each semester, our theater group gets together to discuss possibilities to run by our director. Our director threw Sweeney Todd out as an option but we all knew it was going to be a challenge. One of the biggest things we have to take into consideration when choosing a show every year is our very tiny stage. Our theater has a little over 100 seats but has the smallest little stage. We also have to squeeze our orchestra on the stage right corner of the stage because there is no other place to put them! Visioning sets on that stage always is difficult to start but with the help of our amazing crew, we manage to pull it off every year.

The most important part of Sweeney Todd which also raised the biggest concern for our stage was the trap door. Our options for creating the trap door were limited with the amount of space we had to work with. After all of the brainstorming ideas, our crew and even some of the cast came together to build the coolest trap door. We have an alcove in the back of our stage so the crew built a platform/trap door in the alcove and that became Sweeney's Barber Shop. After Sweeney slit the throats, he turned the chair around, & dumped the person out of the door way that leads to backstage but is covered by a black curtain. The actors fell onto a bunch of blankets. Then they would go on their backs head first underneath the platform. One of our fabulous cast members who operated the trap door backstage would pull a string that would open the front of the platform and push the person out from under the platform, revealing them to the audience as Mrs. Lovett pulled them out. I was genuinely surprised on how amazing it ended up turning out. It looked so great and no one actually got hurt in the process (which is always a plus).

One fun thing about having a small intimate theater was that we got the opportunity to use the entire theater for this show. When Sweeney and Anthony arrived on their boat, they were in the back of the theater behind the audience. In Epiphany, our Sweeney stepped offstage and went into the front row yelling right at the people in the front row and it was great. The entire theater was used for City On Fire which was by far my favorite moment to perform in the show. The lunatics started onstage then jumped off and ran into the audience screaming. We ran to the back and popped up startling the audience as we sung our next verse and then got to crawl around into the aisles. Some of us would even get so into it that we would grab at people's feet to scare them. That was a lot of fun getting to run into the audience.

There are a lot of times where we wish we had a bigger stage so we could do bigger and better things. In the end, we do come up with a bunch of creative ideas that look super awesome when they're put into place into the show. It always is a struggle to deal with staging every year but we always manage to pull it off & impress everyone as well as ourselves!