SPOTLIGHT: Courtney B. Thompson '09

Building a gigantic dinosaur skeleton is not an easy task–just ask History and Science concentrator and Dunster House resident Courtney E. Thompson ’09. Thompson is both the set designer and technical director of the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club’s production of “Pterodactyls,” a play written by Nicky Silver that opens this Friday at the Loeb Experimental Theatre.

Thompson is responsible for the show’s visual centerpiece, a model Tyrannosaurus Rex that is nearly nine feet tall.

"First off, you have to build a dinosaur. It has to be big. It has to look like a dinosaur. It has to be constructed throughout the play. It has to be at various stages of completion throughout the play. At times, we were going to be this abstract dinosaur that was going to be this mountain of crap that was heaped up in the middle of the set. And then we got less abstract; some were going to be bones, and some weren’t."

For Thompson, inspiration from home helped her solve the initial challenge of visualizing the Tyrannosaurus Rex model.

"I was home at Christmas break, and I saw one of those dinosaur puzzles and I thought that was a good idea. I bought a wooden puzzle online, a model, and I played around with it in my room. Mine was two feet tall, and I wanted [the stage prop] to be eight feet tall. We sketched out all the pieces onto a plotter and then blew it up with a machine we had to [a size] four times as big. We scanned it into the computer and enlarged it times four. Once we put all the pieces together, I realized I wanted it to be bigger."

The rest of the set wasn’t easy to build, either. As both set designer and technical director, Thompson explains that she had two separate responsibilities in “Pterodactyls.”

"The designer should have an idea of how everything is going to be built. The tech director finalizes those plans.... We made in a span of over a week. We started last Sunday and finished yesterday. We worked 12 hours a day. If you had been here a few hours ago, you would have gotten a show, because putting [the many parts of the set in place] is a little tricky. Getting them to fit together is a jigsaw."

Being the technical director for “Pterodactyls” requires a lot of time, leading many to question why Thompson would devote herself to a position that remains relatively obscure.

"I didn’t know about tech before coming here to Harvard. Watching a show, you don’t even know what [the technical crew] does. Before I came to Harvard I had never done any backstage stuff except for high school theatre, helping out with costumes or a little painting, but nothing like this.... [Last night] I was home at eight, before that midnight, before that nine. And my roommates will ask me why I did it. They definitely don’t get it. Sometimes I don’t understand it when things are behind or problems come up, as they always do. But when the curtain opens–that’s when it’s all worth it."

Even though people may not applaud her specifically at the show’s premiere, what matters to Thompson is the personal satisfaction of practicing her art as well as she can.

"That’s what it’s all about, when Josh [the show’s lighting designer] puts the lights on. I didn’t just design it, didn’t just build it. I didn’t just paint it. And then you build the frame for it, and tack it all on, and then you put the lights on. And you see something that you only saw in your head, and not only is it all there, but it looks amazing. It’s magical when an idea in your head becomes beautiful, wonderful reality. And even if no one knows that you did it, you’re sitting out in the audience with a little grin on your face."