My Own Personal Hell
By the 2025 Outpatient Collective
Calgary Young People’s Theatre
My Own Personal Hell
Calgary Young People’s Theatre— March 2026
Directed by Kristin Eveleigh
Scenic Design, Construction, and Mentorship by Jake Rose
Assistant Scenic Design and Construction by Annalise Jagt
Stage Managed by Tonisha Krueger
Lighting Design by Abby Weeks
Sound Design by Tauran Wood
Costume Design by Emory Carlson
Another hilarious and absurd play written by the graduating young people at CYPT, this time set in a junior high school where the Devil from Hell and a junior high student make a deal to switch places, each thinking “surely the other has got to have it better than me!”
As one of the largest sets I’ve designed and built to date, this set also naturally had some very peculiar challenges that went along with it. The script had called for a child getting flushed down the toilet and transported to Hell. We achieved this with a sliding wall panel and a toilet on wheels concealed by bursts of fog through the floor. We also had our fair share of special effects in this show, confetti cannons, fog geisers, trick mirrors, and a LED controlled smoking telephone.
The painting for this show was completed in 11 straight hours overnight. Bricks were painted with yellow highlights and lavender shadows. The textured “Hell panels” were made with simple glue and paper towel, then painted. Two banners— one school banner, and one welcome to hell banner, were designed by me and printed off on vinyl.
This project was done with the help of my assistant scenic designer, Annalise Jagt. I provided mentorship and training in design, drafting in Vectorworks, safe tool usage, and scenic construction.
Photos by Rob Galbraith
Behind the Scenes
The landscape of Hell required lots of fog and haze. I fabricated metal grates to allow “geyser” fog machines to spew fog up and through the stage to transition actor swaps, conceal set changes, and even combine with confetti cannons under the set to create a desk “explosion”. Additional Fog machines were routed through regular grates in the walls of the set for additional haze and fog to set the scenes of hell.
A Set Full of Tricks
One of the trickier tasks the script assigned the scenic design was to provide clarity to the rules of the “freaky friday” character swap. When the Devil and Madison, a junior high school student, switch places they assume the physical likeness of the other. The Devil appears to the students as Madison. To show this we implemented a one way mirror trick. With some masking behind and front lighting, the front appears reflective and like a regular bathroom mirror. When the masking is pulled away, and an actor is lit behind the one way mirror, we are suddenly able to see the character on the other side. Mirrored performance pulls it together to sell the effect! This was one of my favorite parts of this scenic design.
A Devilish Swap
Sliding Wall Panel
The sliding wall panel works simply, casters on the bottom with a bumper bar, and a cross-member that the wall panel is held captive on. The seams on the other side were disguised with pipes and a small suggestion of a bathroom stall wall.
BTS photos by Naomi Hanna