Athena

ATHENA by Gracie Gardner. Theatre Horizon. 2022

Athena and Mary Wallace are seventeen, determined, and preparing for battle. Sparring partners for the National Fencing Championships, they balance high stakes fencing attacks with the dangers of becoming friends with your competitor. These fierce athletes risk it all in a breathless series of epic fencing matches and quick-witted parleys. A badass comedy about the ruthless pursuit of glory—and friendship.

This was a show that had originally been slated to open in May of 2020. When the pandemic happened, we had just finalized the Scenic Design and I was in the process of building content for the projections. The show was then placed on hold for about 2 years. It was kind of wild revisiting this piece 2 years later. The plus side of the hiatus meant that I had some time to refine my design ideas and was able to advocate for more of a budget to realize the design. The entire back wall is a video surface in the play. The tricky thing is that I only have about 5 or 6 feet total behind the set and we needed to cover a wall that was about 30 feet wide and 8 feet high. We ended up using 4 short throw projectors. Due to some constraints of the equipment available, that load was split between 2 separate computers. 1 computer running Stage Left and 1 running Stage Right. And to top it off, all of the cues were taken from a completely separate computer that was running Sound from the booth. So we networked all 3 together in order to make this show happen! Made for a bit of a programming nightmare but it all worked out!

For most of the show, the content was giving us time of day and location. Once we head into the Final Bout between Mary Wallace and Athena, we tracked the score through the entire 3 bout competition. With only a handful of exceptions, there is content on the screen almost the entire play. And with the scale being what it was - the content was a large part of the visual look of the show. Much of the play is about the push and pull of this friendship between Athena and Mary Wallace - so we had to be careful not to upstage that storytelling with video. Overall, I think the design turned out really well and I’m proud of what we were able to accomplish!

ATHENA. Theatre Horizon. 2022
Direction: KC MacMillan
Fight Direction: J. Alex Cordaro
Scenic Design: Chris Haig
Lighting Design: Lily Fossner
Costume Design: Natalia de la Torre
Sound and Projection Design: Damien Figueras