Almost, Maine: Set Crew

Hello, welcome to Shawnee Mission South’s Theatre Department Blog! I’m Cristian, and I’ll be talking to you about the progress we’ve been making on the Almost, Maine set so far!

To give you a quick overview of what Set Crew is and what I, a crew head, do is very simple: I, along with three other crew heads (Nash Swinson, Abby Campbell, and Caden Grace), are student leaders within our respective crews. We provide instructions every day, oversee projects, and work closely with our crew members—it’s a very hands-on process! Set is basically what it sounds like: every single set you, as an audience member, have seen throughout the years is designed and crafted by us, along with our amazing technical director, Skip Gordon (he honestly does most of the heavy lifting).

Now, onto Almost, Maine! For this show specifically, Nash and I have been given very special roles. Nash is the head designer, so everything you’ll see when you (hopefully) come watch the show in a few weeks was fully designed by him. Be sure to congratulate him for the incredible work he’s been putting into this project for months! I, as the head technical director, am in charge of making Nash’s design come to life. While he has already mapped out most of the measurements for the platforms that will go on stage, I will be focusing on building and adjusting the set pieces so that everything works the way it’s supposed to.

Set Crew Head Cristian Sorto-Salinas works on a set piece for Almost, Maine.

So far, we’ve started simple: pulling all the platforms we’ll need and cutting 4x4 pieces of wood (aka “legs”) to support those platforms. The plan for this and next week is to finish any platforms that still need to be built, complete the cutting process, and then start moving into the Flex Theatre (our Black Box Theatre) to bring Nash’s design to life! Soon, we’ll begin painting, and hopefully, our friends in the Props crew will help us speed up that process.

Closer to the show, we will begin working on creating life onto the set by working with certain fixtures and light contraptions in order for you as the audience to fully experience the beauty of Maine's Northern Lights. Along with this, we are working on the snow aspect of the show, finding ways to realistically portray delicate, light, and magical snow throughout most the set if not all. 

That’s enough from me for now—thank you to the very lovely people at PR for giving me the chance to write this blog. Be sure to come watch Almost, Maine when it goes up later in September. Until then, I hope I’ll get to write another update for you soon.

Have a wonderful day and keep on rocking in the free world!

~ Cristian Sorto-Salinas