Friday night, I had quite the collection of help. Patrick and his girlfriend, Shelly, Kate and Kee were all in the shop. Shelly and Kee painted black and more black. Everything must be base painted black for this set and then gone over the top of with wood graining. Meanwhile, Patrick and Kate tackled building furniture. Most designers (me included) would just as soon buy, beg, borrrow or steal furniture rather than make it. Sometimes, though, there are things that are so special or so awkward to use on stage, that it makes more sense to fabricate it. For Bonnnie and Clyde, I made a 24" square table for the hideout scene. It needed to be light and durable and easy to set and strike for scene changes. Almost 30 years ago, my father came up with a pattern for making tables, stools and benches that looks good and is light weight and cheap to make, using 2x2s and plywood tops. This same pattern is one that I turn to when I need a utility piece. For 3PO, Scott needs a banquet table. But we have no place to store a big table and they take time to set and strike. So I suggested that we assemble the long table from several smaller ones, all dressed identically. Adding to the one from B&C, we made a second one identical to the B&C table and the third is 24 x 42. (above) Put together, they are 7-1/2 feet long and should have a reasonable presence on stage.
Beds on stage are always a pain in the arse. They are big and clunky. You do not want to move a mattress at home, so moving one on stage is not even an option. Plus, beds are not meant to move around and they rely on gravity to stay together. Picking one up, it is highly possible that it will come apart in your hands. Plus, even a twin bed is bigger than you really need on stage for most applications. For this show, I started with a 3' wide headboard that I had made for Diary of Anne Frank last year. We then made a frame not unlike the tables and benches than I have made before. But, it needs to to look like an old-fashioned bed. So, instead of a plywood top, we drilled holes every 4" around the perimeter and will string it with a criss-crossing web of rope. Then we will fabricate a "feather mattress out of a flat sheet folded in half and sewn like a giagantic pillow stuffed with newspaper. That way, it will be lumpy and rustly like an old feather mattress.
Saturday, it was just Patrick and I. We tackled the trim-out pieces for the stable. The legs and braces for the platform will be sheathed in luan boxes, just like Peachum's shop. and above the platform, a back flat is made to look like the timbers of an old barn, complete with a closed hayloft door.
Sunday, Kate and I worked on miscellaneous odds and ends. Underneath the jail and the stable, we need black flats to mask the upstage legs and provide racking support. Scott wanted a low black flat behind Peachum's at the bands' feet to help control the sound.
We made a 4' diameter luan disc that Gary painted like a moon and will be hung upstage of the gallows. And I reassembled an old post light that I found in the storage loft and wired it to be one of our gas lights. It will be in the vom stage right, along side the steps that serve the audience left section. I purchased a second one on a more decorative pole that will be set just inside the theater when the audience comes in.
There are still a few things to be made...signs, one last flat, and a couple of details. But the bulk is made. I am going to pre-purpose some timber beams that I made for Diary of Anne Frank last year as the attic above the jail. (right) I need to make the flat that these attach to.
Monday and Tuesday evenings are painting nights. I want to get everything base painted black and perhaps the first layer of wood graining so that Gary can work some magic on all of it at once before we load in next Saturday morning...
Next time I write, it will be pictures from load-in. (Unless I do another Marcelle update this week sometime.)
R
PS...Gary working magic on a few pieces already today...
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