It’s been a little while since we spoke (Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It’s been….”
Anyway, since I last posted, there have been a couple of interesting sets, with their own interesting challenges to face and overcome. Everybody Loves Opal comes to mind. At face value, a rundown Victorian-style house, described by the playwright as an “ode to the jigsaw”. That means lots of scrollwork, intricate moldings and the like.
A challenge in itself. BUT. Add the topper at the end of Act one, when the second floor comes crashing down in a Rube Goldberg/Mousetrap kind of sequence of events, depositing about 200 pounds of debris on the stage floor. There’s a musical carousel, a winding string, a pulled pin, a careening wagon on the stairs, a toppled support post, a cracked header beam, and a torrent of falling items from “upstairs” including yellowed newspapers, an old iron that swings like a hanged convict, handfuls of clattering silverware and an unfurling oriental rug that manages to conceal the secret escape of Opal, who we all assume is buried under the pile of rubble.
If this works, there should be a link to the youtube video of a rehearsal of this event. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R835TCdGiAo Trust me, when we got it up to full speed, with all the real debris falling, and the precision timing, it was awesome to see. And it took about three miles of rigging rope, about 25 pulleys, springs, lynch pins, synchronized communication on headsets and a LOT of faith from the director, Tony Braithwaite. Oh, and there was a lot of experimentation to get the right “falling dust” effect. Too dusty, and it would form a cloud that would hang for an hour. We ended up with a mixture of scoopable kitty litter and baking soda sprinkled on top of everything that fell, so there was a nice rain of dust for realism. Ultimately, I stayed on to crew with the ASMs to make sure it ran flawlessly every night. So, for four weekends, my social life consisted of sitting in a dark hallway, whispering off-color jokes and singing through a headset to my friends Nancy, Tom, Tina and sometimes Brian who just couldn’t stay out of the booth.
It was one of the best times of my life. (inside joke: How deep is your well?)
Cameron Purdy
March, 2011
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