The ship sets, costumes and concepts between Spokane Valley Summer Theatre’s Season 10 opener, ‘Pirates of Penzance’

When producing “The Pirates of Penzance,” you need a pirate ship on stage, one large enough for a merry band of pirates.

And when you need a pirate ship fit for the Seven Seas, you call David Baker.

Baker has worked with Spokane Valley Summer Theatre for the last few seasons, but his experience designing for the stage stretches back more than 30 years.

Baker grew up in Yakima, where both his parents were known for their work in theater. After the city’s Capitol Theatre was restored, Baker got a job there as a lighting technician. He enjoyed the work so much that he considered making it his career. When in college, though, he decided to study other things but always found himself taking some kind of theater course.

“If I can’t fight it, this must be what I’m meant to do,” Baker remembered thinking.

He graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in drama and a master’s in theater production from Southern Methodist University. After college, Baker worked at a theater in Okanagan for a few years before moving to Spokane in 2006.

Throughout his career, Baker said he has resisted specialization, choosing to do it all rather than just one thing. He bounces between sitting at drafting tables to building in his workshop to climbing a ladder to fix lighting.

“I like to be on my feet,” he said. “I like to do all the stuff, so that’s what I did.”

Though he doesn’t try to mold theatrical seasons, Baker will share his opinions of prospective choices when asked by artistic directors.

But mostly, he likes to “be given marching orders” and then get to work. Baker sees each show as a unique universe. He only looks at how other theaters have handled the show he’s currently working on as a last resort, choosing instead to stage the show in his head.

“By the end of the script, I have an approach or I have thoughts,” he said. “A style comes to me. ‘Is it vivid with color, or is it in pools of dark?’ I read it and get a feel for it, and then go from there.”

Baker also doesn’t feel a lot of nostalgia for past shows, which makes it easy for him to move onto the next project as soon as the curtain closes .

“It’s like sand art,” he said. “You enjoy it because it’s present, and then you blow it all away and move on to the next thing.”

Baker’s most recent “thing” is the pirate ship in Spokane Valley Summer Theatre’s production of “The Pirates of Penzance,” which opens Friday and runs through July 6 at University High School. He also built a second set and painted backdrops for the show.

As the musical opens, Frederic (Grant Measures) is celebrating turning 21 and finishing his apprenticeship with a merry band of pirates. Ruth (Andrea Bates), the pirates’ maid, reveals that she misheard Frederic’s father years ago when she was Frederic’s nursemaid. He was supposed to intern with a ship’s pilot, not with a pirate.

Frederic, having never seen any woman besides Ruth, believes her to be a real beauty. The pirates have other opinions and suggest Frederic take Ruth with him when he gets back to town.

Frederic announces, though it hurts him to say, after his apprenticeship his sense of duty will require him to work toward getting rid of the pirates. To be honest, Frederic doesn’t see his crew as the best on the seas. Since they’re all orphans, they allow anyone they capture to go free if they say they are an orphan too.

Frederic invites the pirates to give up piracy and return to town with him, but the Pirate King (Erik Contzius) declines. The pirates leave Frederic and Ruth on shore, where Frederic sees a group of young women and is immediately smitten.

All but one of the women reject Frederic. Mabel (Alexandra Lewis) gives Frederic a chance and the two quickly fall in love. Frederic warns the women that the pirates will soon be back, and they return before the women can run away.

The pirates want to marry the women, but Mabel tells them that their father is Major-General Stanley (Doug Dawson), who soon arrives and convinces the pirates that he’s an orphan so they take pity on him and don’t take his daughters.

That seems to mark the end of the relationship between Frederic and the pirates, but he soon learns they’re not finished with him yet.

The musical also stars Shawn Mulligan, Ben Reincke, Alexandra Bright, Kathleen Vertner, Heather Stephens, Noelle Fries and Elly Sims.

The pirates are played by Chase Cummings, Jordan Overturf, Jeffrey Parsons, Jim Reincke and Jayden Salazar. The constables are played by Adriaan Burger, Cummings, Tyson Fletcher, Tyler Heal, Lincoln Jent and Salazar.

“The Pirates of Penzance” features music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W.S. Gilbert.

The show is directed by Yvonne A.K. Johnson, music directed by David Brewster, and choreographed by Andrea Olsen. Baker is the technical director and scenic designer, Esther Iverson is the costume and wig designer, Daniel Urzika is the senior sound engineer, Logan Tiedt is the lighting designer and Braeden Rowland is the stage manager.

Sean Fullmer and Lily Savage are assistant stage managers, Elsie Hess and Nyla Hess are spotlight operators and sound assistants, Amanda Guinn helped with hair and wig support, and Ryan Patterson was the costume coordinator.

The orchestra features Brewster (piano/conductor), Dave Turner (bass), Taylor Belote (drums), Sheila McCallum (flute/piccolo), Jill Cathey (oboe), Andy Plamondon (trumpet), Jennifer Brummett (horn), Brooke Bos (violin 1) and Nanette Erickson (viola).

When working on the pirate ship, Baker made sure it fit into the musical’s comedic plot but also had gravitas and functionality. Size, of course, was a challenge. Baker said he would have needed a parade permit to get the boat from its build site to the theater. They might have taken down a few power lines along the way, too.

But Baker builds everything so it can fit through a standard size door. He also broke the boat into easily transportable pieces that can be reassembled.

Once the set is onstage, Baker takes note of how the actors interact with the pieces and adjusts things as needed. He also works with the stage manager to teach the cast how to bring the sets on and off stage.

“I tend to walk all over the place during technical rehearsals, and I’m serpentining the rows in the audience and I’m backstage,” he said. “I get yelled at by the stage manager, like ‘Tech director, get off the stage!’ “

What can he say? He likes to do it all.

Johnson, SVST’s executive artistic director, chose “The Pirates of Penzance” to kick off the theater’s 10th season on a high note and bring some lightness to an election year.

“Working in the arts professionally for the past 35 years, in election year cycles, I like to make sure that everything is a fun, comedic show and that there’s some familiarity as well to all of the titles …” she said. “For the audience, they will be enthralled from the first note to the very last. It’s action packed from beginning to end with humor.”

Johnson calls the show a “Rocky Mountain” show because of all the layers she’s asked Baker to create on the ship and on the cliffside from which the Major-General’s daughters descend when they first meet Frederic.

The costumes also help tell the story. Each daughter, for example, gets her own color that follows her from costume to costume to help audiences keep them straight. And, while some productions lean too into “The Pirates of the Caribbean,” Johnson said, she worked with costume and wig designer Iverson to create more classic portrayals of the merry pirates.

Johnson has a concept and a vision for her shows, but she also believes it’s important to give the creative team room to share their own ideas.

“It’s all about collaboration,” she said. “The director’s job is to provide vision, but then to collaborate with your creative team.”

And they really are a team, having worked together for the theater’s lifetime, and even before. Johnson staged “The Pirates of Penzance” in 2009 and worked with Baker, as technical director, and Dawson, as Major-General Stanley, then as well.

Along with “The Pirates of Penzance,” SVST’s family-friendly 10th season features “A Grand Night for Singing” and “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”

That double-digit milestone is a big one for Johnson, but the thing she’s most proud of from her time with SVST and her career as a whole is the mentoring she’s been able to do.

A standout example of that mentoring is SVST alum Christopher Tamayo recently making his Broadway debut in the Tony-winning “Maybe Happy Ending.” Johnson traveled to New York to see the show, sitting with Tamayo’s mother and aunt, and said she wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

“To be in awe of Christopher and the journey and to know that I had a small part of being a part of that with him, that relationship will always be there. He’s one of my theater sons,” she said. “That means everything. With the amount of young people that I’ve been really blessed and fortunate to work with throughout my entire life, that is the greatest gift.

“We hope always the memory and success of SVST is being able to provide that platform and that mentorship and to be able to work with students in the Inland Northwest to be able to provide more opportunities for that next step up.”