The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater’s very own Hicklin Studio Theatre in the Greenhill Center of the Arts hosts the 1995 Manhattan Theatre Club off-Broadway hit “Sylvia.” This UW-W production is directed by new faculty member Robyn Accetta, an assistant professor of acting in the Department of Theatre and Dance.
“The play is a love letter to dog owners, using the newfound pet to explore issues of communication and human connection… Sylvia is a ton of fun,” Accetta said about what the play will bring to UW-W.
Starring UW-W senior Abby Frey as Sylvia alongside junior Antonio Parra as the husband and Anna Olson as the wife, the production runs from Nov. 15 to 23, times may vary.
As electrifying as the stage performance is, there’s an overlooked aspect that many audience members don’t tune into. Also located in the Greenhill Center of the Arts is the home of UW-W’s Scenic and Prop design department that consists of the entire back of the building between the Barnett Theatre and Hicklin Theatre, as well as two huge storage spaces in the basement. This section of the CA is managed by Matthew Imhoff, another new addition to the UW-W faculty as an assistant professor in UWW’s Department of Theatre and Dance. Specifically, he works in lighting and scenic design.
“You come to a performance and you’ll see five or six actors but the reality is there are dozens of students behind the scenes working lights or building the set that our audience will never really know,” Imhoff said.
UW-W’s Scenic and Prop design department has a “build, buy or pull” motto when deciding on what props to showcase in a production. Their current collection of scenic and prop design reusable items is upwards of 40 years old if not older. Regarding the build part of their motto, students began scenic and prop design work late this September and the designs hit the build shop mid-October. These students come from all corners of campus whether it be through work-study, mentorships or actors wanting to become more well-rounded in theatre.
The design process isn’t completed overnight, they begin with blueprints and those blueprints then transfer to the scene shop which takes the drawings and figures out how to build them and the rest is history on stage.
“As nice as it would be to walk into Home Depot and buy these things, we can’t always do that so we have to start from scratch,” Imhoff said.
All this tedious and time-consuming work has quite an important and breathtaking end goal.
“It’s really about bringing a script to life on stage,” Imhoff said.
While scenic and prop design may seem like a given to some, not all universities outside of UW-W completely offer these experiences to their students.
“There are universities where they are only training actors in the craft of acting meaning their productions have no stage, set pieces, or costumes but like the UW-W program we have insanity in our acting training while also having the ability to give audiences a very complete performance, a show that has been considered form the design component, which leads to our shows being more meaningful and pleasurable for the audience,” Imhoff said.
Senior Dorothy Truman-Yadon, a UW-W psychology major and the props and designer manager, has had a big hand in the creation of Sylvia.
“So much has gone into Scenic and Prop design for Sylvia, this show involved quite a few props, and we also had to coordinate those props with the correct time period of this playwright,” Truman-Yadon said. “Luckily, I feel like we were very successful with saving money and reusing props we already had.”
Passion is what drives all areas of threate and art and it doesn’t stop at scenic and prop design.
“My passion for scenic and prop design comes from my love for theatre. I can’t express how much time and effort goes into theatre,” Truman-Yadon said. “There can’t be theatre without actors, there can’t be actors without a director, and there can’t be a director without a production team behind them. We all work as a team, and that’s what makes theatre so thrilling and fun.”
