Two months from today the curtain rises for L-S’s production of High School Musical. That means I need to have the entire set built seven weeks from today. Probably sooner if I want it painted.

No pressure.

There have been minor discussions concerning staging since the show was announced in the fall.  Those discussions mainly involved sending set pictures back and forth via email. Here’s some of the early ideas that we liked.

Eventually we settled on a design based on this large set piece. I know its possible especially after building a behemoth set for Arsenic & Old Lace this fall. It’s been my experience that our set pieces have to be huge simply because the L-S stage is huge. In fact, it’s the second largest in Lancaster County.

With our design, we won’t have the vertical support posts as shown in the image above. I’ll be using a series of 2x10x16s to support the front. The first flight of stairs will be twice as wide to possibly double as bleachers.

Something different from the pictures we’re taking our inspiration from is that we are putting the pit band on stage. Where you ask. On the second story in fact. You can see where in the notation below.

Of course, it’s not just me. There are a lot of people involved to make a production of this scale a success. I’m just one cog in a big machine.

While I break ground tomorrow, there’s several people like Erik Welchans who been busy since before the holiday rehearsing music with the actors.

I’ll keep you posted with progress updates.