The scenes people see on stage during plays and other productions are built in a shop at the edge of the Doudna Fine Arts Center.

The Scene Shop is a room filled with workbenches, tools and pieces of wood where the scenes of productions like the “Christmas Carol” and “Almost, Maine” are brought to life.

Christopher Gadomski, the shop foreman and theatre arts professor, said the shop usually makes everything on stage outside of the costumes.

“We are responsible for taking the designs from the designers for the scenery and the props and manufacturing them,” Gadomski said. “If that involves building from scratch, we do so, and if it involves taking what we got in existing stock and modifying it, we can do it as well.”

He said they are responsible for making sure everything functions properly, even when it is on stage.

Everyone who is involved in the production will make notes regarding the different props and if anything is not functioning correctly.

“It varies from show to show, some you have very little tweaking that you have to do to get things working properly,” Gadomski said. “Others it’ll be days and days of notes.”

Gadomski said they will usually find out what the problems are after technical rehearsals and have only a few days to fix the problems.

The group will run through the play and the designers will sit in the audience and take notes on the things that need to be fixed.

“We have to have everything ready by the time shop closes on (opening night),” Gadomski said.

He said the process of building the sets starts with a scene designer sketching what they think the set should look like, including different size scales.

“We take those designs and figure out how it actually has to be built, the practicality of it and what we need to do to make that design come to life,” Gadomski said.

The workers in the shop also help build special projects, some for the Costume Shop.

Gadomski and another worker built the frame for the glow serpent that was featured in the play.

“Those are fun extra challenges that are not technically part of my job,” Gadomski said. “It’s one of those fun problem solving things.”

The scene shop employs about seven students and have different students come in to fulfill hours for classes.

“We have a steady stream, or well you hope a steady stream, of workers who come into the shop and put in their time,” Gadomski said.

Gadomski said one of his responsibilities is to help students find out what they are good at and what they like to do.

“I’ll have anywhere from two to 15 people in the shop sometimes and everybody keeps coming to me and asking me what to do,” Gadomski said.

He said he likes working with the students who come in to work in the shop.

“We have fun, we get the work done, but we have fun,” Gadomski said.

He said there are some people who are really good at building while others cannot. He said he tries to match their likes and skills.

Gadomski said he worked in the shop when he was a student here in 1995.

“I started working in the scene shop, just putting in a lot of hours because I enjoyed doing it,” Gadomski said.

He said he worked in the shop for about three years until he graduated in December 1998.

Gadomski returned this fall to take over as the foreman and to teach classes.

“Ever since I got my master’s degree, I always said I wanted to come back to Eastern and teach, so it’s kind of my dream job, being back here in the theater department,” Gadomski said.

The scene shop is open from 1 to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday.

He said he enjoys the shop.

“It’s never the same thing twice, it’s always getting to do something fun and creative and new, and I thoroughly enjoy that part of my job,” Gadomski said.

Samantha McDaniel can be reached at 581-2812 or slmcdaniel@eiu.edu.