All I can say is, "The mouse is back!"
Sarah Sandberg is the set and props designer for the Cardinal Stage Company's production of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.
From Theater To Opera To TV To Theater
Sandberg has been around theaters in Bloomington since her undergraduate days, when she worked with IU's scenic artist C. David Higgins at the IU Opera Theater. "Yes, I worked with him on a number of opera productions. But there was more work in regional television, so that's where I took my design skills, and found much of my work."
Fortunately for area high schools, for the Cardinal Stage Company, as well as for area libraries, Sandberg has been back in Bloomington of late. "Although I'm a licensed art teacher and I have done design for the high schools as well as Cardinal, I'm currently working as a librarian."
Magic In The Mechanics
For some viewers of the Cardinal production of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, much of the magic of the tale of the famously needy pest is in Sandberg's set and props. "It was fun to work out the variations so the boy and the mouse seemed to be in scale," she said. "We wanted a refrigerator for the kitchen, but it had to be ten feet tall. The mops and the brooms that the mouse used to try to clean things up were equally large."
The toughest piece of work? "The hardest things to build and keep working were the roller skate scrub brushes that Mike Price wore for the mouse to try to clean up his mess. We had to conceal the roller skates. Our final solution for those large bristles on the brushes were lady's hair curlers. It was difficult, but the kids in the audience seemed to enjoy the scene very much, so it was worth it."