Theatre: A Christmas Carol
Photos by:
Kelly Ashkettle | In Utah This Week
Kacey Udy, set designer for Hale Centre Theatre, poses with the chair he designed for The Ghost of Christmas Present.
Udy demonstrates how The Ghost of Christmas Past fits inside Scrooge’s bed.
Scrooge's desk sits on a lift beneath a
slip stage, waiting for its turn to rise
to the occasion. Later, a foam pad will
be placed here to cushion the fall for
two children.
Set constructor Laef Shelton makes repairs to Tiny Tim’s headstone.
Theater: The Ghosts of Christmas Present
HCT’s set designer shows us the invisible hands that create ’A Christmas Carol.’
by Kelly Ashkettlekashkettle@inthisweek.com
As I dangled from the rung of a ladder above Hale Centre Theatre’s stage, two thoughts were uppermost in my mind. First, I was glad I’d worn jeans that day. Second, I was wondering if I ought to see about getting hazard pay.
I was on my way up to the catwalk, where HCT’s set designer, Kacey Udy, was leading me so he could show me what he calls the "Jedi chairs." These six chairs are hidden above the ceiling, and they’re where technicians sit to operate the spotlights. Since Hale is an "in-the-round" theater, it takes three spotlights on each actor to ensure 360-degree coverage.
Each chair has a monitor screen to let the operator see what’s happening on stage, as well as controls on either side of the chair to move the spotlight up and down or from side to side. The overall effect is indeed very much like a small "Star Wars" fighter plane.
Udy’s usual perch during a performance is in the control booth below. Using a headset, he can communicate with the six spotlight operators as well as the seven technicians beneath the stage. He can also watch on a monitor as workers lower and raise sections of the stage floor to add and remove props.
For this year’s production of "A Christmas Carol," a railing rises from the floor to separate Scrooge’s workspace from that of his clerk, Bob Cratchit. Udy’s job includes things like drawing the railing’s shape and color, while it’s up to the shop crew to build it and make sure it goes up and down.
Though "Carol" has been running at Hale for 24 years, it does change each year. "The old set was six or seven years old, and I ended up redoing everything this year," Udy said. "All the furniture is new and it’s a little richer, a little more substantial."
One of his favorite pieces is a canopy bed he found for $300 last year at an Indian import store in Los Angeles. The bottom part of the bed is just a hollow box covered by a layer of foam. There’s enough room in there for The Ghost of Christmas Past to hide until it’s time to rise up and scare the resting Scrooge. The bed has also been fitted with a fogger to create a ghostly haze. "It’s a pretty tricked out bed," Udy laughed.
So how does one come by a job like Udy’s, anyway? "I love drawing and sketching and creating worlds," he told me. "When I was little, I would arrange hay bales to make stuff out in the fields because that was the only avenue I had." He grew up on a cattle ranch in Snowville, Utah, a town on the Idaho border with a population of about 200. He also recalls that his mother gave him a little plastic Alvin and the Chipmunks theater, for which he could create backdrops and set pieces. "I loved it. I played with it forever. That was kind of the start," he laughed.
Udy went on to graduate from USU with a degree in graphic design and a minor in theater science. After doing freelance set design for Hale for a couple of years, he was hired on fulltime four years ago. Mark Dietlein, HCT’s producer, said, "Kacey comes up with great ideas and he has a real good overall vision as well as attention to detail, and that’s hard to find somebody that can do both."
Not everything at Hale is run by complicated technology, though. In one scene of this year’s "Carol," Jacob Marley’s ghost appears to levitate up out of the mist. Udy took me to the basement to show me the small metal square that lifts Marley up. It’s raised with the help of a large lever on which two crewmembers simply pull down.
Of course, I had to ask about one of the most startling effects in the production, when The Ghost of Christmas Present makes a dramatic point by shoving two children into what looks like a deep hole in the stage. They actually only fall about three feet, Udy told me. A large foam pad about 8 inches thick is placed on a lift piece and a technician sits on it while shining a light upwards so the children have a target jump towards. As the children fall into the hole, they land on their feet and the technician catches them and passes them to another technician.
"The hardest thing about that is they have fun," Udy said, explaining that it’s difficult to keep the child actors from looking happy about jumping into the hole, and adding that in one of the two casts, an actor is throwing his own son into the hole. "It’s a very family atmosphere, here," Udy said.
Udy is generally designing for three shows ahead, and there are usually two shows in rehearsal while one is performing. One rehearsal room has a circular carpet that exactly matches the dimensions of the stage. This lets Udy mark the floor with tape so actors can get used to avoiding the literal pitfalls.
With very little downtime between productions at HCT, the hours can be grueling. In the week between the time that "Into the Woods" closed and "A Christmas Carol" opened, the stage crew worked about 120 hours. "You’re here so much together," Udy said. "You’re here for holidays and you’re here through all this great stuff. You really become bonded."
Udy was offered a chance to attend grad school in Boston and work with a professor designing sets on Broadway, but chose to stay at Hale. "I’m a little more smalltown. I want to stay close to my family and have my family around me," said Udy, who has two sons, ages 3 years and 10 months. "It’s a dream job. I couldn’t ask for something more exciting or more fun," he said.
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