In both The Winter's Tale and A Midsummer Night's Dream, it snows on stage. That's a small piece of a much bigger puzzle for Wendy Stark Prey, Chicago Shakespeare Theater's director of production. Her job is to take everyone else's vision and figure out how to build it, night after night, without anyone slipping on stage.
Wendy talks about how she got into theater almost by accident, through speech and debate club, and how a costume background led her to run one of the largest costume shops in the country before eventually landing in production management. She explains how LED screens and projections are changing what's possible on stage, and why newer technology doesn't always mean a better show. She also covers the specific headaches of a theater that sits on Navy Pier, right on the lake, from HVAC systems that can ruin a scene to a live flame effect that needed sign-off from the Chicago Fire Department.
And she breaks down the real puzzle of this season: two plays, one set, one cast, and two production teams who each see it a little differently.
Bringing Up the Lights is an original series from Sound Concept Media, written and narrated by Keith Conrad.
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