Imagine Perfoming Arts Center – Analog Artist Digital World

Bonnie Sprung designed and built this set for The Ensemble Company in residence at the Imagine Performing Arts Center (1700 Oviedo Mall Boulevard, Oviedo FL). Bonnie created these fun time lapse videos as she works on the set. I saw one of her videos and decided I needed to sketch her at work. She was working on a large tree house set.

The set was for a play titled Our Dear Dead Drug Lord written by Allexis Scheer and directed by Matthew Macdermid. Four high school aged girls formed a pact in Miami where they all worshiped Pablo Ecsobar a drug lord who was gunned down in Colombia. The four girls cast were Sarah Barthelemy, Louise Ortiz-Hernandez, Ana Gomez-Lugo and Maddy Paston.

The four girls, Pipe, Zoom, Squeeze and a new recruit used a Ouija board to summon the drug lord in a seance that morphed from teenage play into a possible supernatural occurrence. The girl’s raw performances explored each girl’s hidden trauma and suppressed rage while they all searched for some form of control in their lives. The performances were mesmerizing and powerful. The play started playfully but ended with a guttural scream.

Bonnie Sprung’s set build was part plan and part instinct. She worked on one side of the set and then the other, using wood for the broad strokes of her constructed composition. The camera she used to shoot a time lapse of the process was right beside me. The main thing was that the set had to be solidly built and safe for the actresses. Once construction was complete it would influence every aspect of the performances.

I felt privileged to see the bare bones skeleton of what would become an amazing set. Bonnie Sprung has worked on set design, scenic painting, make-up and stage management for over 200 productions in Orlando and New York. In this small theater space at Imagine Performing Arts Center, she created theater magic on a tight budget. She showed me what the set would look like when complete. She had taken her concept sketch and fed it into AI and from there a very detailed an colorful rendering was done. I couldn’t wait to sketch the play live.

Playwrights’ Round Table will present Native Voices: Future Shock at Imagine Performing Arts Center ( 1235 Oviedo Mall Boulevard, Oviedo Florida.) Seven brand new play will be presented by Florida Authors. The website outlined the production as, “A future of AI that knows everything about you. Where AI can decide whether you’re worthy of life. A future of transporters, and clueless ghosts, and murder by chocolate, and how to get in touch with your feline self. And of course, just making your way in a world that changes by the day.”

Director, Chuck Dent invited me in to sketch a tech rehearsal which was my only option since tech went late until 11pm. When I entered two actresses were performing a scene seated at a table. I believe one actress was Susan Woodbury, who I admired for a previous performance I had seen of Control of the Dirt. The other actress was Olivia Rocha. I blocked them into the sketch but then erased them since the scene ended shortly after I started sketching. In general the two were anxious about loosing one another. Susan remained quite animated for such a controlled scene. The larger context of the scene, I may never know.

The stage was reset for a whole new production, which seemed to be film noir detective themed. A Femme fatale actress was quite proud of her large black wig. She was actually quite comedic. In tech the actors don’t really run lines, they just pose in certain scenes of the play so that the lighting tech can figure out what color and intensity of light to use. For me as an artist, it was perfect since, the actors would stay still for extended periods allowing me to sketch them. The challenge came when the theater would go black repeatedly between new light settings. Once the director and light tech were in agreement the settings, they would be set as a cue of the show. The actors must be eternally patient since they were their as mannequins rather than actors. They knew how to keep the rehearsal light and playful.

As I prepared to leave, another play directed by Jac LeDoux, was being set for a tech run through. I can’t really offer any review about the shows. I am not even certain which of the shows I saw. I can say the film Noir looked fun, with a kidnapping, and the female lead clicking a rifle upstage. I suspect it was her partner who was kidnapped but that was never fully established in the rehearsal. I have so many questions and want to see the shows for the answers.

Playwrights’ Round Table will present 7 new plays by local playwrights Nov. 1-3 at the Imagine Performing Arts Center, in Oviedo. Tickets are $20 general admission$ 15 seniors, students and military with ID, and $10 for theme park employees with ID. Tickets may be purchased at the theater or online.