Chicago Children's Theatre

From the Desk of: Michael

I'm Michael, the production manager for Chicago Children's Theatre. I manage all the production elements of all the shows we do. That means that the lighting, sound, scenery, projections, props, and costumes all fall in my domain, as it were. I'm responsible for contracting the designers who produce these things, making sure that they have all the tools necessary to create what is needed, supervise the construction of these elements, and manage the budgets for these departments to make sure we aren't spending too much money.

On smaller shows, such as If All the World were Paper, which is running now until November 30, or on The Selfish Giant, which opens January 18, I perform some of these designer tasks myself. I coordinated the construction of the scenery for Paper, based on drawings and photos of the original set, which is in London (and too big and expensive to ship over here). And for both Paper and Giant I designed a simple light plot. With my colleague Tim, we hung, circuited, focused the lighting instruments, and wrote the light cues. Paper has around 34 lighting instruments in the plot, and about 36 light cues, which is a lot for such a simple show.