Bean Chiodo ’20. Photo: A’ntonia Benson ’18
By A’ntonia Benson ’18
In Life and Theater: A JKB Series, blogger A’ntonia Benson ‘18 randomly selects members of the Skidmore theater department to chat with about how and why they choose to be involved with theater at Skidmore. Today, A’ntonia sits down with Bean Chiodo ’20.
AB: What’s your name and class year?
BC: I’m Bean, I’m a first year at Skidmore.
AB: Perspective major?
BC: Theater, Studio Art, or Music.
AB: What role do you play in the theater?
BC: I play the role of disgruntled carpenter. I work in the scene shop and the electric shop.
AB: What brought you to the JKB, Bean?
BC: I actually came to Skidmore for the theater program, because my technical director in high school went to Skidmore. His experience, combined with how much I liked the school and the many opportunities they offer, is the reason I came here. The technical theater department here is really strong. If I wanted to minor in theater I definitely could, and that was something that got me really pumped. I didn’t want a conservatory style of theater education.
AB: Can you describe your interests when it comes to theater?
BC: I really like… wood. That’s the simplest way to put it. I just love building things and painting things and creating a suspension of disbelief within the theater. It’s always where I’ve felt most at home. I spent all of high school in a tech booth. I really want to dive deeper into painting and projection, kind of like what was used in The Orphan Sea. I’m looking at it from the perspective of an artist as well as a technical theater person, so it’s a really cool intersection of the two.
AB: Did you help with the construction of Who Will Carry the Word?
BC: Yeah.
AB: That’s so cool!
BC: It was so much fun. I mostly worked on the rake: the incline, and then the curve of the masonite. Masonite is a really pesky material, so to get it to bend like that was just great. And then we did styrofoam texturing on the back to make it look like the page had just been torn off. I’ve dealt with really realistic shows in the past, but this was an abstraction of what the women were experiencing. It was really rad to do as a first production.
AB: When it comes to theater, are there any future projects that you’re excited about or goals that you have for yourself?
BC: I want more queer theater. I feel like we’re operating on a very binary perspective of theater and I think it’s time that changed. Even in our first year class, we have to choose a monologue that is accurate for our age and our gender. That has put me and the five other queer people in a weird position where the only monologues we can find about trans people are about being trans. We have to get up on a stage in front of 80 people and perform this monologue and it’s a very personal thing, whereas everyone else can just pick whatever they want because they fit into a binary gender. The lack of queer voices is distressing to me, so thats a future project I want to work on. Also, I just want to hop around everywhere. Do you ever just walk to the basement of the costume shop? I walked in there last week and I had no idea what anything was. And that’s my favorite feeling, having no bloody clue what anything is or what it does or how it works. And then I can work there for six months and figure at least some of it out. I like that first moment of wondering when you walk into a place. It was like that when I first walked into the lighting shop and even the scenic shop. Even though I’ve been in spaces like that before, the JKB is a lot more finessed.