Recently the Winnetka Community House purchased a professional theater projection system, a digital backdrop screen and a projector that has placed the community theater at the cutting edge of production technology.
This theater projection system can be customized for individual live shows, and was used to transform set designs for the fall 2015 productions of “Mary Poppins” and “A Christmas Carol,” and will up the ante on future productions -— from the small-scale Winnetka Children’s Hour “Night Tales” on Feb. 4, to the major musical productions like “The Sound of Music” (April 28-May 1).
Children’s Theatre of Winnetka and Winnetka Community House board members consulted with projection artist, Rick Frendt, after finding inspiration in the digital production system he had created for Bravo Production’s presentation of “Mary Poppins” at an Oak Park middle school last year.
Frendt said the hardware used to achieve the animated projection effects for the Matz Hall stage at the Winnetka Community House required three, high-lumen (very bright), short-throw (images get large over a short distance) projectors. These projectors are each connected to a computer, and mounted on a truss system, aimed sharply down onto a white cyclorama — a white curtain stretched across the back of the stage, made of a fabric designed to reflect light. The hardware for the system installed at Matz Hall cost approximately $12,000.
“This new projection system has made it possible for us to take on the most industrious productions — the sky is the limit really,” said Cathy Hirschmann, Children’s Theatre of Winnetka director and choreographer. “Now we can re-create the jungles of ‘The Lion King,’ or the shimmering New York night-skyline for a production of ‘Annie’ — all of this without incurring the expense or labor of building these sets ourselves. This is so exciting for us, for our audience, and especially for the children participating in our shows.”
While this technology has been employed by professional theaters for a decade, it is only now that it’s finding its way into community and school theaters, which traditionally, has required heavy construction of stage sets.
Connie Yonan, who joined the Children’s Theatre of Winnetka in 1992, when her youngest son was was cast in “Annie,” and has since produced 13 Children’s Theatre of Winnetka shows, sees great potential for the technology.
“In the ‘Sound of Music,’ when Liesl and Rolf sing ‘I Am Sixteen Going on Seventeen’ and it starts to rain — we don’t have to imagine it, the rain comes to life as part of the animated projection,” Yonan added. “When Maria and Capt. Von Trapp get married, sunlight filters through the stained glass window of the church during the wedding. And when the Nazis appear on stage, their flag will actually unfurl behind them. The show becomes a magical experience, transporting us into new worlds.”
To create the effects, Frendt begins by deciding which visuals will enhance the storytelling and by making sketches before using computer software to build and model images in 3D, and later to composite those images.
“As with any new technology the inclination is towards overuse,” Frendt says, “so I go for understated simplicity, the less-is-more approach.”