Jungle Book Crazy

So things are way underway in Jungle Book world. I'll start this off with informing the world that I am a terrible scenic/lighting designer because I still haven't read this script... don't really need to though, (at some point I'd like to, but I haven't received a copy yet) The upside is the director gave me a great idea of what she wanted and I remember the old movie pretty well. So the idea is that since the story is A. a show with child actors and B. A meta story that starts out in the real world and enters the story/jungle world, we'd make it a playground taken over by the jungle. Imagine Jumanji when the jungle takes over everything. So far I've actually stuck pretty close to the original sketch I posted a couple posts back. This is where it has taken us.

We've got the playground side that you've seen and then other side has this climbing rock wall and a tunnel that also serves as a cave. Again pardon the quick sketch, I was trying to show my students how to frame the tunnel out.

Note that the tunnel got moved to the other side, partially because I didn't quite have enough space on that side of the stage and ultimately the monkey bars got tied into it to help strengthen them. So here is the framing for the levels. They got a little more work from here but this was the basic frame.

This is something I learned how to do when BG did Winter's Tale and I love the end result. So this material on the face of the wall is homasote, for those who don't know what it is, essentially it's recycled paper (cellulose) that is compressed and formed into a sheet primarily for sound proofing. So to make the nice stone and mortar look I used a V shaped bit and a router and just cut in a "mortar" trough wherever I wanted. After that to give it a little more texture and to harden the outside you use a scenic dope which hardens and gives it a tough durable shell. At BG we used a product called Jaxsan, I mixed up my own variety from a recipe. The great thing about mixing your own is you can tint it since one of the ingredients is paint so it gives you a nice base close to what you'll be painting, or in theory if you liked the color you could be done and not have to paint it after applying the dope.

So here's the whole thing a couple of nights ago. We've got a "tower" just like a fort might, the slide and some great levels on both sides of the stage. Down the center I've got the start of a river. As if the area sort of rests on a delta. This has a bunch of purposes. It's a sort of demarcation line between the two areas of the stage, the good and the bad if you will. Also you can treat it as individual tiny little brooks, or view the whole thing as if it's a scaled down map of the area in which the story takes place.
 There are a lot of different ways to look at it.

Here we are a day later. The monkey bars came in today and they are great, not only do they work for this, but in the future I could mount them vertically and I have a nice metal rung ladder on a set. Awesome. I played with a bunch of placements until I ended up with them here. This was better than I ever could have imagined because with it tied into both sides of the set it doesn't need a whole lot of extra bracing, (it will still get a bit more, but I swung all over it testing it out and if it can handle me.... it can handle most anything). So it's got the strength AND it physically ties the two sides of the stage together and bridges the river that separates them. Another advantage is the legs have a built in step so that you can use it to climb on top of the tunnel to stand, plus it doesn't block any views or get in the way, it ended up perfect.

Lastly, here is where I ended my night, I commented on facebook that it felt like I was painting a map and I kind of am (in either case its fun doing it). The river is going to stay pretty crisp but it will get some lighter blue and white "flow" lines in it to give it some texture and bring it to life better. The grass and sands will all get softened with some sponging and maybe some rag rolling and the lighter green will serve as a base for some light touches of the dark green paint. With all said and done I'm really happy with how this is turning out and after my tech class attacks it with paint tomorrow it should be nearly finished. Still a lot to do, but it's all going to be pretty fast stuff that should get checked off the list in no time.

Keep checking in and hopefully there will be some more good stuff once this show is over and I've got some more time to post.

Boris Bally

 So here's a recap for this past week of school. We had our artist in residence, Boris Bally, the kids loved him and needless to say, he was awesome.

He's a really down to earth guy, super successful and honestly struck me as me in 25 years. We were incredibly similar and had some really great talks during the week, I hope I get to work with him again in the future. So since he's a metal worker primarily he brought in all kinds of stuff and the kids dove in... I did too. The plan was to use circuit boards as a sort of canvas and then to add to them however you want, almost everybody was completely engrossed in the project and the whole week flew, it was really surprising how much some of the kids excelled. With all of them finished now it will get pieced together to make a patchwork quilt of all their work and the example that Boris made them and we will install is as a permanent piece in the lobby of the arts building. Put together all of their work is really neat and you can spend an hour or more looking at all the detail people put into them.

 It was a great experience and it really has kicked  me back into gear with my own work, in part because I really want to learn more metal working (it's one of the last materials I haven't really gotten into other than plastic) I can't express the amount of fun I had, I spent nearly all my free time up in the art room working on things and just tinkering. Part of the reason was I just wrapped up Mill Girls and this was the first real project that I haven't had to think about. I just sat down and started attaching and riveting things together. I didn't plan it out I just added a piece, looked at it and added another piece until I reached a point, 3 days and maybe 10 hours worth of work later, where I said... yeah, that's done.

This was my final piece (along with a small metal globe I made) It's got a lot of personal stuff so it really is stuff that I pulled out of my junk pile as well as little touches that are important to me. I think more importantly it has jumped me back into woodworking. In one of the talks we had he mentioned that his first real job out of college was making models for a company and he was burning out and he stayed sane by doing his own work at night when he got home. It made for long days but he was able to make something for himself and I think I needed to be reminded of that since I'm going through some of the same thing right now. So This past saturday I picked up my list of projects and un-tabled the "upcycled" door headboard.

I spent maybe six hours on this, but part of that was a couple trips back and forth to home depot and some head scratching because I planned something out, changed my mind, forgot I had changed my mind and then caused myself some headaches down the line. That said, I'm pretty darn happy with it, I'll do a step by step once it's actually finished, it needs a little more work and some paint and it will be all set.

With that mostly done I've started two more projects of my own AND I'm about to get real heavy into the build for Jungle Book. I think once that is done it may be my best scene design yet, I think it's going to be a lot of fun. More on that in a moment. The two projects in my shop which will also get some pictures later are a blanket chest made out of 1x3 furring strips very similar to the treasure chest I made Erin Moeller/Damm for her wedding, but larger. The other is another "upcycling" type project where I'm trying to turn a used pallet into and end table. I haven't done this before so I'm prototyping it and just kind of winging it to see what I can turn it into to refine for another attempt some other time.

For now I will leave you with my rough sketch for Jungle Book and I will get into the concept and all the work we are doing on it in another post. Just imagine a playground in the jungle or the part of Jumanji where the jungle starts taking over the house.

Long Overdue

Well, It's about time I get this thing back on track. I don't remember what I last updated on but I'm sure I'm forgetting some stuff and it will just get dropped. Sorry about that for anybody who was deeply invested. I've been neck deep in our spring production of Mill Girls. It opens this weekend and I'm almost finished, but then it's right back into work and starting on the Jungle Book. As an exercise for the uninitiated in tech theatre, design and tech direction when all of this is done I'm going to do a small primer on the step by step approach of designing, building, painting, and teching a show for those who don't know what all goes into it. I think it will be kind of neat to document it from start to finish and since I may actually present at the BG alum gathering that is happening I'd like to have a recent design through the whole process. So if I haven't described Mill Girls it is exactly like it sounds. Girls in the early textile industry who work in mills and fight for their rights as workers and go on strike etc. It's actually a pretty good (albeit short) show. The set features a boarding house, the gate to the factory, the main factory floor and a couple of general playing areas that are used for a couple of different purposes.

I was a little concerned about the floor going into this but I think it turned out alright. We're actually seating people on stage and over flowing into the house only if needed so it's going to be a really intimate, mostly thrust stage. All the curtains and soft goods except the cyc have come down and we're playing up the fact that we're in an industrial looking theatre and we are even using the loading bridge as the roof of a building a girl is going to jump from. It's turning out pretty nicely. The floor and gate are pulled as closely as my skill allows from the actual mill the play is based on. The entrance is a cobblestone drive leading into an open courtyard surrounded by factory and the work floor is planked rustic wood. My facebook has an album of the field trip the cast took to see the mill.

The picture on the left is an almost finished product when it comes to the floor. I have a little minor work left on in. I took this standing on the second story of our boarding house which I had to re-engineer from the house we had built for Pippi Longstockings. It looks similar but it entirely different and was completely taken apart and reassembled. I have a different view for this show. I'll be running sound from the corner of the stage and we've got both lights and sound control sitting on stage behind the audience with a live "band" of found instrument percussion which actually its a lot of fun.

I am affectionately calling this sound post as the "cage" because its shoved into the corner sitting next to our electronics box and I'm literally caged in with stuff on all for sides of me and a laptop between me and the board. It's pretty tight quarters and I can't move without a search and rescue expedition to come after me.

While I'm just about ready to be done with this show I've had a great time with it because we're really pushing what the community here views as theatre. While I've seen stuff like this done before, for our group it's fairly extreme and will confuse and weird some people out as they realize not all theatre has to be proscenium, bright and shiny musicals. I'm looking forward to the reactions. I've also gotten to play with the space a lot and I'm continuing my love of practical lighting as stage light and above the factory floor we've got 4 Ikea work lights hooked into the dimmers to actually function and it really adds a lot to the space.

They look better in context and by next week I should have some good photos of the final set and some lighting, we'll see how that goes.

I've had a couple of long nights in there painting floors and working lights, but it's 89% finished so I'm into the home stretch and starting to think out Jungle Book which has me both tired and excited. I'm starting to burn out, but Jungle Book is the last major show and then it's pretty much done for awhile other than our benefit concert thing, and then maybe a break.

End of a night of painting.

The Jungle Book plan thus far is (since it's children's theatre) to have the set as a playground, with slide, rope net rope swing and monkey bars but taken over by jungle. So think of the movie Jumanji when the jungle takes over everything. It will be like that creeping in, overgrown with plants and made of bamboo and wood. As if a child was literally out at recess and imagining this jungle land of talking animals and setting on what he or she has available to play with at the time. I'm excited and this will be another pretty non traditional set for me. That's all for now I'll be back soon with some more pictures and more exciting news including (hopefully if I can find time to start) documenting the making of a headboard out of an old 4 panel door that's sitting in my shop right now.