We are 4 months from Opening Night of our re-imagined production of Wizard of Oz and the pre-production process is begining to get clear.
This past week while our creative team was putting up a production of Damn Yankee's here at the Carousel, we were spending all of our "down town" in meetings about OZ!
We had the priviledge to travel to downtown Cleveland and meet with Puppet Designer's Robin VanLear and Ian Petroni. Also included in that meeting were myself (Artistic Director); Marc Robin (Director/Choreographer); Dale DiBernardo (Costume Designer); Paul Black (Lighting Designer); Robert Kovach (Set Designer); Tony Kovacic (Techinical Coordinator); James O'Conner (Sound Designer/Technician); Amy Earp (Assistant to the Artistic Director); and Mike Stein (Stage Manager/Production Manager).
At this meeting we had the Scenic Designer (Robert Kovach) present his story boards. As the entire team went through each scenic element, each department spoke about the requirments needed to achieve the creative design. Creative idea's were thought about, debated and thrown out. The ones that worked were kept in note format by the Director and Designers to be flushed out furthur.
At this point we have put together a production schedule; have gotten our minds around how we are going to solve certain creative challenges and are inspired and excited our staff to raise the artistic bar higher then ever before here at The Carousel.
