WOODBURY — While Nonnewaug’s Drama Club celebrated the closing of its spring play, the National Art Honor Society celebrated the success of their set design. The set brings the play to life and immerses the audience and actors into the story line.
Leeza Desjardins, the National Art Honor Society sponsor and Nonnewaug art instructor, understands the importance of an engaging set design for a show.
“[The set design] is important so that it sets the environment of where things are and what’s going on,” says Desjardins. “It is such a great visual um in a good feeling. When you see different, um different plays that you go to say Broadway, and you see all I mean, the first thing you do is your eyes are like going crazy looking at everything everywhere.”
To have a great set, you need a plan and the parts to do so.
“[Drama Director Catherine Pelkey is] giving us some pretty specific instructions on what to do for the set,” says Audrey Rogers, the National Art Honor Society president. “For example, she said she needs posters for this, this, this, and this.”
“A lot of the stuff we’re doing is posters specifically for clubs because the play is set in a high school,” says Kiera Jacobi, vice president of the National Art Honor Society. “So we were designing all the posters for every club and all of the banners. We are also doing graffiti on lockers and we’re doing a band uniform.”
While the other members of the NAHS were hard at work designing and making the banners and posters for the stage, senior Sophie Solury was diligently working on making a costume and explains her process.
“I got the band uniform from the drama department and I basically started making some plans, looking up some band costumes on the internet,” Solury said. “I saw one with just stripes of color all over, and I wanted to follow that. I got some adhesive rhinestones off of Amazon, and I cut them on the strips and started placing them where I thought they would fit best.”
The students who were in the play also appreciated the hard efforts the NAHS put into the set design.
“I liked how the posters on the sides were so big; it made the entire auditorium stand out,” said sophomore Eva Bandas, who had the lead role of Jesus in Godspell and saw the impact that the artwork had on accentuating the characters. “The posters that we were hanging up during one of the numbers showed how everyone’s [character] was getting together to celebrate Jesus [in Godspell].”
