Although the Marian Theatre’s doors remain closed, scenic artist Abby Hogan recently shed some light on a crucial aspect of the venue that often gets overlooked and, quite literally, walked all over—the stage floor, that is.
Hogan planned to host Painting Floors the PCPA Way on Wednesday, Aug. 5, as part of PCPA Plays On: Community Enrichment, the company’s ongoing virtual workshop series.
“The floor is the most important scenic element of our theater because the audience sits on a tiered rake above stage, and most of the audience see the actors with the floor as the actors’ backdrop,” Hogan told the Sun. “It is the largest, most visual element in the theater and it allows us to create realistic locations, like a wood plank floor in a rustic cabin or marble tile interior floor in the von Trapp family estate.”
The design of the stage floor also serves as a “broad stroke,” Hogan explained, that helps support the director’s overall vision for the tone and atmosphere of the play.
Hogan, who first began scenic painting for PCPA in the mid ’80s, offered a virtual trip down memory lane—via Zoom—as she prepared to share a handful of her favorite floors she and her students have painted over the past three decades, for Jesus Christ Superstar, Tommy, Shrek, and other shows.
She also was planning to take viewers further back to floor designs before her time with PCPA, covering the company’s ’70s and ’80s productions of Fiddler on the Roof and My Fair Lady.
“Some of our audience members may be surprised at how the stage deck has evolved over the last half century,” said Hogan, who originally pursued a different theater concentration during her time at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri.
“When I first started studying theater in college, I thought I wanted to do lighting,” she said. “I was privileged to have so many encouraging mentors at Webster—Peter Sargent, Dottie Marshall, and Carolyn Ross—who really helped point me in the right direction.”
But Hogan also commented on the synergy required between stage lighting and painting.
“The floor also needs to be able to react well with the lighting to help the lighting designer illustrate things like mood and time of day,” she said.
Hogan first joined PCPA as an intern in the props department, during the summer of 1986, in between terms at Webster. After graduating from Webster, Hogan was soon offered the staff scenic artist position at PCPA.
As one of several PCPA resident artists participating in the Community Enrichment series, some of Hogan’s peers include actor Yusef Seevers, who was last seen on PCPA’s Severson stage in The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, less than a week before COVID-19 mitigation measures forced the show to end its run early.
One of Seevers’ upcoming two-part workshops is Black Theatre, which guests will be able to join via Zoom on Wednesday, Aug. 12, and Wednesday, Aug. 26, from 6 to 7 p.m. both evenings. The two classes will cover parallels between specific plays and the real-time experiences of Black Americans during the period in which the plays were written.
While Black Theatre is recommended for ages 12 and older, Seevers is also participating in PCPA’s Youth Enrichment series for younger students. Workshops include There is no ‘I’ in Team, an ensemble acting class co-hosted by Seevers and Leo Cortez, PCPA’s education and outreach director.
“Participants can expect to learn some details that will help them understand the importance of an ensemble and the teamwork needed to make a production happen,” Seevers said. “The work and exercises I will focus on are all about how to prepare yourself for teamwork—mainly breathing and emotional prep—while also now looking at how we translate these things to a virtual medium.”
An emphasis on the virtual realm is appropriately shared by many classes in the Zoom series, including PCPA Casting Director Erik Stein’s Video Auditioning workshops. While seemingly timely during the course of quarantine, virtual auditions were already integral to most theater programs, he explained.
“Video auditions are not only the future of the theater industry, they are a reality,” Stein said. “Nearly 50 percent of the actors PCPA brings in for our summer seasons audition by video. It is challenging to find a theater training program that does not have a video element to their audition process.
“We hope to give the students the skills to create video auditions like a pro,” he added, commenting on the class. “We will talk about framing, lighting, sound, and we will focus on capturing authentic, raw, layered work.”
Arts Editor Caleb Wiseblood is behind the curtain at cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 6-13, 2020.
