Award-winning set designer Skip Epperson, chairman of the Cabrillo College Theater Arts program and longtime set designer for Cabrillo Stage, spent an hour and a half this week advising Scotts Valley High School’s Advanced Drama Class on how to build the set for the upcoming play “Urinetown.”
Epperson, whose work can be seen any time Cabrillo Stage puts on a show, was impressed by the student’s creativity as they begin the design process to build a set completely out of recycled materials.
“There are so many good options for it,” Epperson said. “We talk about it at Cabrillo; every entertainment set has so much waste with it.”
The class is preparing to put on “Urinetown,” a post-apocalyptic drama with social and financial messages, in the spring.
“It shows us a world that’s not our own,” assistant director Alicia Pitts, a sophomore, said. “This could be us someday. It shows us what not to do.”
The set designers plan to use plastic bottles to build the majority of the set and other recycled materials for different elements.
They’re planning a dump run soon and, in the meanwhile, scouring the city for plastic bottles.
“‘Urinetown’ is a post-apocalyptic society. It’s a period of time when there was a war,” head set designer Scott Boynton, a junior, said. “Everyone is poor, and there is also a big drought. People are impoverished, so the set is basically made of junk. Basically, it’s sort of a landfill.”
The class hopes to collect donations from locals — plastic water bottles, vintage clothes, old leather boots and other random plastic pieces — to assemble the set and costumes.
The play is scheduled to open April 22 at Scotts Valley High.
Epperson, who was invited by drama teacher Karin Babbitt to talk with the class, praised the teenagers’ vision after his visit Tuesday, Feb. 15.
“These kids are great,” Epperson said. “I’m impressed with their enthusiasm. They’re not scared to think big.”
