Welcome to the very first entry in the Renovation Diary! At last, the project to renovate our auditorium is underway. Well, not quite. In order for construction to proceed, the whole auditorium needed to be empty, which, of course, required the help of our very own Drama Club members.

The first goal was to move all the props and objects out from the two storage areas atop our two dressing rooms backstage. The stage was divided into two sections: Pieces to keep, and pieces to "deconstruct". The difficulty was getting heavier objects down to the ground from their 10 foot elevation. Paul Yochum, seen here, used his brawn, along with many others, to bring down the set pieces.

 
The "deconstruction" pile unsurprisingly became quite a hit with the students. Crobars, mallets, hammers, and limbs were all employed to take apart anything from ramps, whole walls, and even a fake piano used in the 1980's! Fortunately, the deconstruction pile spread more joy than splinters.
Then, of course, was the group of items that needed to be kept. These set pieces had to be loaded into a truck to be transported to storage. There was a lot to keep it turns out, and the first half of cleanout consisted mostly of carrying these objects from backstage to the loading docks, then out to the street to load them into the truck. The work proved strenuous for the students, as Abby Feldenkris, Taryn Schoenfeld, Molly Lashner, and Colleen McQuaide (from left) struggle with a set of stairs.

The work did not end after all the set pieces were loaded, though. There was still unused wood and panels to be loaded. Dozens of heavy wood panels, called "flats", were carried out to the same area to be loaded into yet another truck. The task required a strong team effort, which Matt Unger and Jared Kass (top, from left) demostrated as they directed Allie Feinstein and Lauren Jaffe (bottom, from left)

 

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