After joining her school’s theatre program during her junior year of high school, sophomore theatre major Carrington Wigfall was thrown into the world of theatre, forced to retain a whirlwind of information at once.
“Instead of being taught things in steps it’s like, okay you get thrown into it. And it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Theatre has just been a really good outlet for me and anytime I forget how much I love theatre, I do a project and then I say, ‘Oh this is why I love this thing so much!’” Wigfall said.
Taking on the role of director in a high school showcase, Wigfall was given the opportunity to take a leadership role early on.
“I got to be the set designer, I got to do the blocking, I got to do just about everything when it came to the set, got to just figure out what costumes were which. It was just a really fun experience to take all the information I learned that year and pour it all into one scene,” said Wigfall.
Wigfall got to fulfill the role of assistant stage manager on one of her favorite projects, The Swing of the Sea, in Winthrop University’s theatre department’s most recent show. Wigfall said, “It was really really fun, I got to sit from the very beginning and saw how all of the different steps were coming together. When we first started out, I was just like ‘How is this going to work? Is this going to be online? Is this going to be virtual? How is this going to play out? How are we going to do different scenes with social distancing?’ And then seeing how it all played out at the end, it was just a fun project to work on.”
While Wigfall was able to perform during The Vagina Monologues last spring, she also plans on auditioning for the spring production this year. However, the artist is trying to focus on the design technical aspects of theatre now.
“I’m a design tech major so I focus mostly on the technical aspects, so stage management, directing, those are two of my favorite things to do in theatre. I’m also starting to get into costuming with the costuming shop that we have, but hopefully in the future I get to do stage managing and directing. Lighting and set design is fun and all but that’s mostly what I like to do.”
When asked about the most difficult production problem she had to solve for a production, Wigfall said, “The Swing of the Sea, it was so difficult at first but everything ended up working out, there were lots of COVID concerns throughout the whole process…so we were like ‘Okay how do we make sure that everyone is comfortable? How do we make sure that everyone feels safe to come in this space? How do we get our audience to know that we’re one doing this safely and cater to them?’”
Wigfall went on to say, “Before, it was going to be half virtual, half online and then we changed everything to completely virtual, so it took a while because we were like, ‘We have the lights, but how do we get the lights to look good on camera? How do we get the sound to work on camera? How many camera angles do we want? Do we want close ups? Do we want long shots?’ So I think one of the biggest problems is adapting it to virtual theatre.”
Wigfall explained how she touches bases and keeps production going throughout COVID.
“I think the most important thing is making sure that everyone is transparent and making sure that everyone is on the same note. Since I was assistant stage manager, I was able to watch my stage manager…touch bases with everyone especially because [of] COVID…making sure that there’s constant transparency. Constant communication is something that I plan to do when I walk in [to] future productions, with things that I have been doing and I got to see, so I think transparency is like the best thing…production or just in life.”
Photo by Cooper Beck
