Behind the scenery

With a skillful use of sets, light and color, scene designer Tom Hansen creates theater magic on a shoestring budget.

By BARBARA L. FREDRICKSEN

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 28, 2000

The "dress for success" gurus say everything starts with a good first impression.

The same is true for a theatrical production -- only the theater's first impression is made by the set. If the audience gasps in admiration, or, better yet, applauds, when the curtain sweeps open, both actors and patrons are put in the mood for a good show.

That happens regularly at the Show Palace Dinner Theatre in Hudson thanks to 24-year-old Tom Hansen, the technical director in charge of sets, lights and sound for 18 months. Hansen's colorful, lush, meticulously detailed sets and sensitive, unobtrusive washes of light heighten the feeling of theatrical magic for every show he designs.

Perhaps as important, his clever use of the Show Palace's limited stage area and rapid set changes have all but wiped out the long, tedious between-scene changes that plagued the theater in its earlier days, letting scenes flow into each other without a hitch.

"Words can't describe him -- his creativity is unbelievable," said Nick Sessa, co-owner of the Palace. "He is an incredible asset to us."

Director and theater co-owner Jimmy Ferraro agrees: "Tom is an awesome, 24-year-old prodigy."

Says the third partner, Sal Sessa: "He's a nice guy, too."

The praises are similar anywhere Hansen works, from the Players Theatre and Theatreworks USA in Sarasota to City Players in Clearwater to Pasco-Hernando Community College and Richey Suncoast Theatre in New Port Richey.

"He is a remarkable young man, no doubt about it," said Bruce Blaine, a longtime professional Broadway performer, now frequent community theater director and actor throughout the Tampa Bay area, and frequent mentor to Hansen.

Hansen didn't start out to be a set designer. He wanted to be an actor.

"I went to New York after my first year in college" in Colorado Springs, Hansen said. He got a few acting jobs, but once someone saw what he could do with hammer, nails and a paintbrush, people started asking him to build sets, paint sets, design sets.

"Then my grandmother called (from Florida) and said, "Come on down,' " he said. "I fell in love with the weather."

He started here as a volunteer set painter-carpenter in any venue he could find "just to learn." Among his teachers were Lino Toyos, now set designer for the Asolo Theatre in Sarasota, and Sharon Massey, scenic painter for Disney World.

They, and piles of college textbooks, taught him the tricks of the trade. Poring over old issues of Architectural Digest taught him about elegance and luxury. Working as a celebrity charcoal portraitist for independent art galleries taught him about detail.

Operating on a shoestring taught him about cost savings.

"Anyone can go to Broadway and be given a $1-million budget and do wonderful things," Hansen said. "The real challenge is to be on a limited budget. I have been raised on low-budget theater."

His goal at the Palace is to put together a show for $500 to $1,000, using stock set pieces from previous shows and "found" materials at local hardware and home stores. The Music Man cost $3,000, mainly because it has nine sets with nine different looks, but Hansen plans to revamp those sets for several other shows down the road.

"These sets should last for two years," he said. That's about a dozen shows.

Hansen puts in 10-hour days, six days a week, often in a hot, dusty warehouse a few blocks from the Palace, with his assistant, Jerry Schmidt, a stagehand for 15 years in Lexington, Ky.

The process starts when director Ferraro chooses his scripts.

"I read the script, Jimmy reads the script and the choreographer reads the script," Hansen said. Then they get together to sketch out the action and decide on a color scheme.

"If the costumes are ready, we look at the costumes; if they're not, the costumer looks at what we're doing," he said. "ForCan-Can, we knew the bright dresses would stand out in front of the cooler colors. For Red Hot Ragtime, I wanted a light set so we get to do a lot with lighting and have a lot more versatility."

"Tom and I have an unusual chemistry that a director and a designer can only hope to have," Ferraro said. "Creatively, when we work together, we feed each other the same lines, we are on the same wave length. It makes for a very exciting creative team."

Once he has an idea of where he's going, Hansen draws plans as detailed as an architect's for a skyscraper or an engineer's for a suspension bridge.

"Scenic design is the first thing in any show, because it's like a map," Hansen said. The design must be safe, workable and practical. Actors have to be able to move in and around every piece and every flat.

"A plan allows me to do a map sitting down in an air-conditioned office," he said. "When I get to the shop, the measuring is already there, and it cuts my construction time in half. Plans are the bible of the scene shop."

The challenges are increased because of the Show Palace stage's limited height, width and depth. The center is just 12 feet high, the stage only 52 feet wide and 26 feet deep, much smaller and shorter than the average professional stage. All the flats, curtains and set pieces have to be crowded onto that stage, plus up to 41 actors singing and dancing. Hansen has added side stages for short, minor scenes, and director Ferraro sometimes brings his actors through the audience for big entrances and exits, giving the feeling of spaciousness.

The cramped quarters mean that actors must operate with split-second timing to avoid mid-stage collisions and flatten themselves against backstage walls to hide from the audience before their entrances during every show.

Even so, Hansen has plans for turntables, jack knives (hinged sets) and roll-down painted scenery in future shows.

"Sometimes I'm up all night thinking how to solve a problem."

Before Hansen arrived, the Show Palace had to rent sets from a firm in Orlando or have them built by a outside contractor.

"We had to modify them for our stage, and even then, they sometimes didn't fit," said Nick Sessa. "We couldn't do too much to the ones we rented, because they weren't ours."

After the Show Palace merged with the Angel "garden cafe" Theatre in May of 1998 and switched to an all-Broadway, all-musical format, the pressure for a fulltime scenic designer-builder became more acute.

Such people don't grow on vines in these parts, but a patron at the Richey Suncoast Theatre saw Hansen's set for Meet Me in St. Louis, was impressed, and urged him to apply for the spot at the Show Palace.

"That was a lucky day for us," Sessa said. "Thirty percent of the whole, overall show is wonderful sets, and a good set makes 100 percent difference."

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.