The Secret Garden -

Lake Country Playhouse, Spring 2023

This show was a beautiful cocooned idea that had to be tucked away amidst the beginning of the pandemic, and the Hartland community was buzzing with excitement when it was brought back to life. It was beautiful how it reflected the themes of the show itself.

Luckily enough, I had the privilege to design for it this time around, and it proved to be a unique challenge in that the stage was tiny, there was basically no backstage, and there would often be 20+ people moving about. The set had to accommodate transitions without going to black. We decided to make the platform a wheeled unit that could be pulled out and covered with a quilt for the indoor scenes. Also, the iconic garden door was put on a track and wheeled behind our false proscenium to magically appear.

Mary’s Indian Colonial Dollhouse

In the first scene, Mary plays with a dollhouse in her Indian home, with the house representing her childhood before the tragedy. To achieve this with the dollhouse on hand, I added basswood sheets and created a more elaborate era-specific Imperialist Indian exterior.

This house needs to be set “on fire” every show, and to achieve that, we will have red and yellow bits of fabric and tissue blown from inside the house to look like fire is escaping through the windows.