Converting a Stock "Carriage"

This is a local community theatre "stock" prop that I have used several times over the years. It is a period wagon that was made of sturdy welded steel about 20 years ago. It originally was the "Surrey With a Fringe on Top" for a community production of "Oklahoma!" But over the years it has been converted to Tevye's cart for "Fiddler on the Roof", the pumpkin coach for "Cinderella", the "Wells Fargo Wagon" for "Music Man", and the runaway cart for "Les Miserables". So this old prop will surely live on to make many more appearances in our shows! To rent it, you can find the Triad Sceneshop link below. Click my photos to enlarge them:
Above, you can see the carriage as I converted it into the runaway cart for our 2008 production of "Les Miserables The School Edition". This is after the lights come up and Valjean lifts the front wheel to save the man. For this period looking "junk wagon", I fabricated a fake driver's seat and a dozen burlap bags filled with lightweight styrofoam packing peanuts!

But the cart entered the stage in darkness. First, I had the crew quickly push it out onto the rotating electric turntable. Then the scene was lit with only strobe lights, so it gave the illusion that the cart was rolling. You can see the actor falling under the front wheel of the cart, which is actually standing still on the rapidly rotating turntable. The "rolling" effect was stunning to the audience.
*The "cart crash scene" is briefly shown at the :55 second mark in this video:

Below is that same carriage in another one of our plays. This is my pumpkin coach for our 2003 middle school production of "Cinderella" the musical. I got some flexible PVC plumbing pipe and fashioned a fragmentary/suggestive pumpkin on top. (The castle drop is from KENMARK).
*The bare carriage frame can be rented locally at the Triad Sceneshop. See it at the bottom of their "props" file: http://picasaweb.google.com/TriadStageSceneShop

Periaktoi that revolve on Lighting Booms!

Expedient Design:
I had a tremendous amout to stock "hollywood style" flats that were 10 feet tall but only 2 feet wide. And when I designed "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged" a couple years ago, I knew I wanted some "old school" theatrical elements such as periaktoi. So it was a good fit to use my narrow flats for this purpose. I built 4 revolving units for each side of the stage so that they became "legs". I left space enough between them for the actors to enter and exit, yet from the audiences viewpoint, the painted images still formed up properly.

Then to make each revolving unit stand up without tipping over, I put my 10 foot tall lighting booms inside them! This made them spin like one of those countertop paper towel dispensers! In the photo above, you can see the 10' tall lighting boom lying beside one of the periaktoi.

Each unit had 3 swivel casters on the bottom and the 75 pound boom bases kept them from tipping over. They worked really, really well!

In the above photo, you can see how the tip of the lighting boom just barely pops out of the top of the periaktoi at the hole in the center.

The first side of the set of periaktoi had a carved styrofoam effect to look like interior castle stone. See the photo below, (click to enlarge):


The second side was painted to look like the Scottish countryside, with rolling hills and old castles. See photos below:


The third side of the units was painted to look like a thick forest. (Sorry, I can't find a photo of that scene).

Anyway, the periaktoi were fun to build and I feel like this project helped teach the students about a theatrical trick that goes back to Greek times. I no longer have room to store these flats, to I am willing to sell or give them to a local troupe.

-Dana Lowell
Set & Lighting Designer
Sloan Theatre

The "Marilyn Monroe" Effect

When we produced the musical comedy "The Return to the Forbidden Planet", there was a song about Miranda, the young female lead from Shakespeare's "The Tempest". Our director put her in a Marilyn Monroe style wig and dress...so I couldn't help but do the "Some Like it Hot" gag on the subway grate!

Notice in this photo - she is standing over my stage-right trap door. Click photo to enlarge:

EXPEDIANT SOLUTION:
I needed a quick, simple and cheap solution for a trap filler. It had to be a porous grate yet it must safely hold actors during the show. So the obvious trick that popped into my head was to use a plastic-style industrial shipping pallet.

I went to the local "garden mulch store", where they grind up old wooden shipping pallets to make colored mulch for landscaping. They were nice enough to give me a dozen of the plastic kind for free! These are the heavy duty PVC plastic pallets made by the seaport of Hong Kong for shipping one ton engines and such. I used most of the pallets to build my elevated bandstand for this production. But I picked the nicest one to cover my trap door opening.

The plastic pallet was about 3-1/2 feet square. I only had to trim about 1/2 an inch off each side to get it to drop perfectly into my opening in the stage floor. It was very secure and very safe. I anchored it in place with a few 3 inch drywall screws at the corners. I painting it to match the science-fiction theme. (It had latex primer paint inside and out as a flame retardant).

Anyhow, when the "Some Like it Hot" gag occurs in the song, I had a crew kid under the stage blast her with an electric leaf blower! (The boys on crew would fight over this particular job). The loud on-stage rock band easily covered the sound of the leaf blower. The effect was terrific every time. It got the intended laugh from the audience!


BONUS!
Later in "Forbidden Planet" I needed a dramatic effect for the entrance of the evil mad scientist, Prospero. So I had the crew blast him from under the stage with a Rosco smoke machine, boosted by a fan. I also had a couple PAR cans under the grate with green gels. The effect was cool, and the actor really milked it for laughs.
Click to enlarge:

Notes: High school actors - Greensboro Day School. Director - Ruthie Tutterow. Set/Lighting Designer - Dana Lowell.

Practical Tree Stump

My recent production of "Picnic" with high school actors.
Click on photo to enlarge it:

EXPEDIENT SOLUTION:
This is a fun project for the crew to do. And it's quick and easy. Cut the top out of 3/4" plywood. Make it a slightly irregular circle. Cut out a bottom base that is a few inches wider and more irregular. Attach 2"x4" legs about 18" high in between these two pieces. Then use scraps of 1"x4" lumber at diagonals to frame out the slope of the tree stump sides.

Then cover in muslin. Staple the fabric in such a way that you create crooked pleats. This helps give the look of bark and roots. Cover the muslin with full-strength Scupt-or-Coat glue.

Then paint with grays, browns and black to give highlight and shadow to the barks. Spatter it with paint to give it more texture. Then staple on tiny sprigs of fake ivy along the bottom roots. This is an important touch that helps add realism and helps blend the stump into the groundcloth.

You end up with a practical prop that can be sat on, stood on or used as a small table. It can be saved as a stock piece for any number of shows, from "Peter Pan" to "A Midsummer Night's Dream".

Click photo to enlarge:

Notes: Sloan Theatre, Greensboro Day School. Director - Barbara Britton. Set/Lighting Designer - Dana Lowell.

Mr. Lowell's "Gold Rosettes" - the epitome of "Shabby Tech"

Wow, I get more internet comments on my simple "Gold Rosettes" than any other design element I have ever done!

The show sold out all four nights and both lead actors are pursuing acting careers in college. This particular photo became the centerpiece of our "King and I" poster in the lobby.

But my "Gold Rosettes" are merely a tiny background touch that helped make the scene appear more opulent. The cool thing is that this expensive-looking effect was created at almost zero cost! And it was fun!
(Click photos to enlarge them a little).

EXPEDIENT SOLUTION:
To me, it was a "no brainer" and one of the first design elements I decided to do as production began on "The King and I" in 2007. I knew I needed some golden embellishments for the royal palace...and things like the bottom of a 2-liter Coke bottle is a interesting geometric shape that catches my eye. So I immeadiately concocted a plan, and asked the cast and crew to start bringing in empty bottles.

Step one was to gather dozens of 2-liter bottles. This was harder than you think! Below are the ones we emptied during a Saturday afternoon "Parent Blitz" - a volunteer workday for prop and costume construction.


Then the fun part! We used a DeWalt cordless reciprocating saw with a fine-toothed blade to cut the bottoms off all the bottles. (The tops were put in the recycling bin).


Next, we spray painted all the bottoms with glossy Gold spray paint. I ended up buying dozens of cans of gold paint for the "King and I" set! Then, as you can see below, we pre-drilled all the rosettes with 3" drywall screws in the center.


I covered the facia of the platforms with a regal purple velour that I got free from the stage curtain factory in town. Then I trimmed out the top edges of each step with gold colored metal strips from Home Depot. (These are the strips intended for strengthening the corners of walls when they apply plaster). The bottles are held onto the steps with just the one 3" drywall screw in the center.


The creative part was to decide which alternating pattern of rosettes would look the best from the audience. I tried several. One pattern resembled Morse Code! But I went with a semetrical repeating pattern that mimicked my diamond pattern in my gold floor paint. If you look closely in the next two photos, you can see that the period floor design transfers right up the steps using the Coke rosettes:



The finished product worked quite well. The fact that the audience was 30 feet away in our 600 seat proscenium theatre helped the effect work even better. The gold pieces did not read at all as "Coke bottles" to the audience, but rather, just tiny golden decorations in a very refined Thai palace.
Below is Tuptim in a dramatic moment. (Click to enlarge).

Stone Temple for "Children of Eden"

Click photos to enlarge:

The "Children of Eden" script calls for a scene at a location like Stonehenge in Act I. But our Director prefered setting the scene in a more exotic way, such as among the large heads of Easter Island.

EXPEDIENT SOLUTION:
So I found a construction supply company that carries what they call "flotation billets", which are giant styrofoam blocks used under diving platforms at lakes.

I bought four blocks, which were 8 feet long, by 2 feet wide, by 2 feet thick. I had the crew cut them up in the lobby, (where it is much easier to clean up the huge mess). I used a DeWalt cordless reciprocating saw to carve the styrofoam up like turkeys. Then the crew used manual saws to finish sculpting the details. Finally we covered them completely with cheesecloth and Sculpt-or-Coat for protection, and sprayed them with a heavy primer coat of latex as a flame retardant.

The effect worked very well and they were lightweight enough for the cast to carry them on and off stage easily.

I did not have room to store them anywhere in the theatre, so I traded them to a friend who owns a party rental store*. She uses some of them for a tropical paradise setting for corporate parties: http://www.brendascostume.com/hawaiian.html

*By the way, what I got in trade from Brenda's was an outstanding golden throne chair that I used as Gastone's "horned chair" in "Disney's Beauty and the Beast", on the right in the picture below, (click):

Colorful Undersea Life - on a budget

Click photos to enlarge:

Here's an expedient idea for giving your stage an "undersea" look. Last year we did a children's musical called "Go Fish", which I like to describe as a "musical version of 'Finding Nemo'"...(although this musical came out first). It's basically just 20 cute little second graders dancing around in various fish costumes for 30 minutes. Every school does a show like this.

EXPEDIENT SOLUTION:
Anyway, I went to the local dollar store and bought all the swimming pool "noodles" that they had in stock. Then I concocted some colorful "sea enemones" out of them. Very cheap, very quick, and very effective. (My photos should enlarge if you click on them).



Below is the back side of one of the props. I simply used 3" drywall screws with large washers to screw the noodles onto random bases, such as this paint bucket. Other (blue) noodle scraps were wedged between the rows to splay the arms outward like the real things.

The whole project took less than an hour and the noodles were only a buck a piece. You can't beat that for quick and easy children's theatre with little or no budget!
By the way, they have a brief video clip of this production: