Creating An Environment: Using Sketchup for Set Design

Episode 157: Creating An Environment Teacher Ray Palasz talks about set design and creating an environment. He also discusses a set design project using Sketch Up. You too can include set design in the classroom. Show Notes * Sketch up * You can find a link to a tech challenge (Olympics) handbook on this page * Riders to the sea * Mind over matt * Drama Teacher Academy Episode Transcript Welcome to TFP – The Theatrefolk Podcast – the place to be for Drama teachers, Drama students, and theatre educators everywhere. I’m Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk. Hello! I hope you're well. I hope you’re smashing today. I hope you’re awesome. Are you awesome? Please, be awesome. And thanks for listening! This is Episode 157. You can find any links to this episode in the show notes which are at Theatrefolk.com/episode157. So, any time that we can add a technical theatre component to anything we do – whether it’s on our blog or here in the podcast – I think it’s really important to jump on it. I want to jump on it – metaphorically, of course! Because, if I jump on the equipment, I break it and I already bought it. So, you know, that doesn’t help me. I can’t say, you know, “Break it, you buy it!” because I bought it and then, if I break it afterwards, it’s just a pit of sadness all around. So, let’s not break it. Excellent! Let’s get it back on track! So, technical theatre, it’s an area I certainly can’t talk about with great confidence and I know that many of you out there are sort of in the same boat but you know you want to add that technical component to your classroom and you aren’t sure where to start. So, Teacher Ray Palasz is going to be your start as we talk about set design. Let’s get to it! LINDSAY: All right, I am speaking today with Ray Palasz. Hello, Ray! RAY: Hello! LINDSAY: Ray, tell everyone where in the world you are. RAY: I am an English and technical theatre teacher at Lake Central High School in Saint John, Indiana, which is about 30 minutes outside of Chicago. LINDSAY: Oh, perfect! That gives me a wonderful… sometimes, people say where they are and I’m like, “Yeah, I have no idea where that is,” – and here’s my ignorance showing – 30 minutes outside of Chicago, that’s awesome – unless you’re too busy and you don’t get a chance to get up there. RAY: No, my wife and I, we have season tickets for the Broadway in Chicago series. So, we get up there probably about every six weeks or so to see a musical. It’s a lot of fun. LINDSAY: That’s awesome! Technical theatre – tell me about your background with technical theatre. Where does that come from for you? RAY: Okay. Well, I didn’t really get involved with technical theatre things until I was in college and I had to take my technical theatre class for my theatre major and it was your basic introduction to stage craft type of course and I really started thinking, “This is really kind of cool – to be able to put stuff together and build sets and, you know, have control over lighting and costuming and things like that.” At the time, I was working in the career center at Valparaiso University and then I asked the technical director...