We live in a pretty small community now; a choice we made as we neared retirement and began to look for desirable community amenities as life simply slowed down. Nearby medical services, food stores, restaurants, shopping and entertainment become higher priorities when you want an easier more accessible life. And so we found that in Mid Michigan, nestled in between the modest sized towns of Midland, Saginaw, Bay City and Mount Pleasant. Within a 30 minute drive time window, we can visit all those areas and cover all our needs and wants. But with retirement and a reduced demand for my time also comes a new burning question: What the hell am I supposed to do all day?

Too many memories come flooding back about our grandparents and parents, who like many of their own generation viewed retirement as a license to just sit back in a comfortable chair and relax until they died. That lack of motion and mental activity made their last few years difficult to watch as mobility and mental acuity faded. Not me. Not us. Options were needed for us to keep going and keep moving.

Clearly you already know unless this is your time first seeing any of our content, that I do some of that woodworking and video editing stuff. But that’s not really enough to fill up a week, every week. I needed more, though I will admit that comfy chair down in my basement home office is damn inviting, especially when there is a good game on TV. The internal fight against the gravitational pull towards the comfortable chair led to some charity work and volunteering.

I’ve built some furniture to help out our local YWCA offices and donated other wood items for their annual fundraising activities. There is also a small community effort to rejuvenate a large storage garage and turn it into a shared wood shop workspace. The goal is to bring in groups of high school kids or other community organizations to learn the craft of woodworking, or to donate tools and the open workspace to build things for groups like Habitat for Humanity. We’ve been working to tear down all the internal garage walls and storage shelves and build up some new training spaces and a conference room learning center. Those two organizations are fun to work with, but the work days and projects and need for my help is sporadic at best. I needed to find something with a decent recurring schedule where I could apply some woodworking experience and even a little creative mental juice to help keep my body and mind engaged. Entering from stage right; our little community theater.

Lego Pieces Begin to Fit

It was a haphazard introduction for this volunteer opportunity. I learned about the open position from our local woodworker’s association and one member there who was already involved with the performing arts center. He had my name and email address and passed it along to the stage manager who reached out for an introduction.

A small group of us met for the first time in early August, where we went around a circle of chairs on center stage to introduce ourselves and talk about any pertinent experience. Most of the people there were already involved with the center, but a few of us were new. I thought that this might be a great fit for me as a volunteer because I’m retired, had the extra time, knew about woodworking and also used to be on the stage crew for all our high school plays. Back in the day, I helped to build and paint set designs, and operated the follow spotlight during performances. This new little group would be a good fit.

Our town is not huge. It sits about 40 spots down on the list of largest cities in Michigan, but it has a pretty nice performing arts center thanks to a wealthy corporate benefactor. There are two stages in the building with the largest supporting 1,500 patrons and a smaller stage that seats about 400. The large venue is designed for big traveling shows who have their own production crews and manufactured set designs, but the smaller stage was for community theater and kid friendly programs. These productions required sets to be built from scratch. This was our domain. Even the small stage had a fully rotating stage floor that allows up to 4 set changes on a single turntable. The atmosphere was amazing actually, and yet not a hint of self importance or pretension among the crew there. It is a good group of people just looking to donate some time to the community.

Sometimes when you volunteer time to a charity or a community initiative, it’s hard to find your place and fit within that group. Very often the volunteers come and go with a new crew there almost every day and fresh volunteers are never quite sure how they best fit or how they can best help. This didn’t feel like that. Most of our working crew would be focused on actual set building, and than meant designing, cutting and assembling things out of wood. I knew exactly how I could help.

Our first day was spent extending the front wings of the stage. There was a semi-circular leading edge to the stage to accommodate that turntable middle, with a row of curved steps leading up to the stage floor. Because of the curvature, the right and left sides of the stage were swept back to mirror that curve which eliminated some space to the left and right. Our new construction would build framing for new platforms that extended the stage performing area or turn the front of the stage from a semi circle into a flat, straight stage line. More room for performance? This was a cool idea.

Confirming My Commitment

You realize when you start to become invested in a work effort like this, when the work conditions are harsh and you still feel good about carrying on. In the current off season for the center, the powers that be had decided to completely upgrade the HVAC system in both theaters, which also meant that there was no air conditioning anywhere in the building. It’s going to be this way for a couple months leading up to the beginning of the season. Outside temperatures were 92 degrees and muggy. Inside temperatures were a little lower than that, but the sweat was free flowing. Still, I cut. I smile. I toss out an occasional dad joke. It was all good; wet but good. Somehow I already knew I would be enjoying this new role at the center.

Both stage extension frames were cut and built in about 5 hours, including reinforced legs and stringers. Our next build step is to add on the tops to those frames that fall level with the current stage and then anchor everything down into the concrete floor. On to the next build.

The first performance this year will be “Sense and Sensibility” which will require a number of new furniture pieces. It’s weird and goes against logic, but each show and each show director seems to require very specific details for everything on set. So where you may already have a couple of different dining table designs kept back in storage from a previous play, they’re never quite perfect for the new show. I mean, why use something you’ve already made and already paid for when you can build something completely new for a one time use? I know, right? A completely ridiculous assumption. We built a new 10 foot long dining table on huge rolling casters (because everything must roll in and out of scene), but at least the director is happy.

All that sounds like a complaint but it isn’t really. It’s the requirement for something new and specific that keeps our theater backstage workshop busy. And so we design and build new things for the show. A huge-ass dining table. A beefy rolling bed frame with fake brass headboard. Huge 12 foot tall window walls also built on rolling base frames. And best of all for this show, a recreation of an 18^th century Pianoforte; a tiny predecessor to the modern grand piano. All we had was a picture to go from, but from a distance it actually looks like the real thing.

The 30 Foot Rule

I talk about fake pianos and dining tables and will openly admit they are built from cheap plywood and cut-down 2X4 pine. One might wonder about how good they actually look up close. How professional or “good” can a cheesy plywood dining table actually look?

The answer is, it does look cheesy and it also looks fantastic. Up close you can see the seams where the plywood pieces come together. You can spot that the table legs are actually cut from 4X4 curvy and rough sawn fence posts. You can tell by lifting it that the whole thing is amazingly lightweight and not really built to last a lifetime. You can immediately tell that the wood grain was painted on. Artistically done? Yes. Would it fool you up close? No.

But, you’re not sitting in the theater seats for that inspection. You are being critical up close with a magnifying glass. Sitting 30 feet away or more, the dining table, the bed frame, the Pianoforte all look like the real thing. 30 feet just so happens to be where the closest front row seat is located in relation to center stage, and everyone else in the theater is even further away.

Perhaps our new technical director said it best. All these pieces look pretty amazing even closer than 30 feet away, so if you’re in the audience and you find the time to somehow spot a small flaw in one of the pieces we’ve created, the actors or the director aren’t doing their jobs.

The Wrap

I can see this now as a long term commitment I can make to the community, donating some of my time each week and keeping my head and hands busy. We seem to work on a pretty static schedule 2 days a week to build out props and stage pieces needed for each show. Our season begins in November though we began work in August to prep the stage area and start building pieces for the first show. We’re almost dome prepping for Sense and Sensibility, and then while the actors rehearse for that first performance, we will be off in the back wood shop making stuff for the next show. I’m not sure if there will ever a lot of YouTube video opportunities there, but we’ll see. Hard to film something with a crew when you are expected to be building things with the crew. “Hey wait a minute. Continue holding up that heavy 12 foot window frame while I reposition the camera”. This is not how I should be endearing myself to my fellow volunteer co-workers.

Check out the base frame for our Pianoforte below. This is without its paint and fake keyboard but those finishing touches are still underway. I hope you support your own local community theater. If you happen to be a woodworker, or painter or even someone who likes to sew with fabric, your own theater might need your volunteer help too!