Steampunk Pen Holder With Pens.
This was a last-minute prop that turned out to be Katherine’s favorite prop in this Award-Winning Spectrum Theater Ensemble Steampunk version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. This prop lived on stage the entire show and could be found in the Nurses station center stage.
To make this prop all she needed was some glitter glue spray paint, metallic spray paint, acrylic brown paint, some pens, and a cup. To get that rusty look to the side of the cup she then sprayed lots of glitter to the side and covered the sparkles with paint.
Madison Weinhoffer
Steampunk Jameson Bottle
This bottle was designed and created by Katherine Niedzwiadek for Spectrum Theater Ensemble’s Production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in the summer of 2019. Her roles for this show was prop master, ASM, assistant scenic designer, and assistant lighting designer.
The director wanted to go with a steampunk theme throughout the entire show and wanted the liquor bottles to be an iconic part of the show during the party scene. This prop was brought to a few fundraising events to try to showcase the show’s theme.
Logbook
Katherine created this logbook for Spectrum Theater Ensemble’s Award-Winning Steampunk version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. During the performance this logbook was displayed on a stand located down stage left. The logbook would make its way around the stage when actors would write their thoughts and actions in the book for Miss Ratched to read out loud.
Going with a Steampunk theme she had decided to age the paper in the logbook by using a lot of tea bags. Before dyeing the paper in tea, she crumpled the paper into a ball to give the pages more age.
For the outer side of the logbook, she took some scrap wood and spray painted it in a metallic copper paint. She also chose to stick with the copper and the silver paints throughout most of the props in this production so they could have matching tones.
The details to the cover of the logbook are more pieces of scrap wood that she spray painted metallic gray paint to it and screwed some nuts to the cover to give it more of a Steampunk vibe.
Daniel Perkins
Candy Cane Throne & Candy Cane Bong
In 2019 Katherine was the scenic designer for Spectrum Theatre Ensemble’s Production of Santaland Diaries.
She designed and helped construct the candy cane throne. The idea came to her from HBOs Game of Thrones and their throne that is made of swords. If she could make one change to the design she would have liked to add more candy canes to make it look more fuller.
Katherine also designed the iconic candy cane bong for this show and she would like to thank Justinian Stanislaus from Red Fork Empire for constructing the bong.
Christmas Peppermint Ornament Table
This prop was created by Katherine for Spectrum Theater Ensembles production of The Santaland Diaries. You could find this prop located down stage right during the entire show.
To create this prop as you can see, we needed a lot of old Christmas ornaments to make this work. The whole point of the Christmas ornaments was a creative solution to solving the problem of covering up the table legs and bringing them into the Santaland world.
Scenic Design for The Santaland Diaries
In the two photos to the left are three props that Katherine designed and or constructed to accomplish her scenic design for The Santaland Diaries. In this scenic design there is a flat located upstage left that has a cut out square hole in it which was then covered with Muslin. This allowed her to be able to project different images from behind. To make it look like it was a part of the Santaland world Katherine added a frame to the front of the flat to make it look like it was a photo of a fire above the fireplace.
This scenic design relies heavily on props such as the candy cane throne located upstage center and the Christmas peppermint ornament table that was located downstage right.
Magical Tree by day
Katherine created this tree for the Reverie Theatre Groups production of Midsummer in 2022. Her role for this show was stage managing however she did design and construct the tree for the show.
The base for the Magic tree is an old pillar that was repurposed along with chicken wire and old newspapers. Because they did not have a large budget she had to be creative and use materials that the company already had, and this is what she came up with.
The photo on the left is a what the Magical Tree looks like by day.
Magical Tree by night
The reason why this tree is Magical is because it glows on stage. The director for this show wanted to have a lot of glow-in-the-dark elements in this show to make the set look like it was made of magic.
As you can see in the photo above and the one to left, the tree is covered in a mossy green paint on the trunk and on the top foliage. This is because she used numerous different kinds of glow paint to give it that magical look when the tree was illuminated by a LED black light.
The photo on left is what the tree looks like by night.
