The "Holy Crap" stage of Scenery Production

We are now solidly into the Holy Crap stage of scenery production for The Little Mermaid.  In case you've never heard of the Holy Crap stage, it's the point at which you examine your list of things that still have to be done, and then you look at the available dates left on the calendar, and you are completely speechless except for the words, "Holy Crap!" which you keep uttering to yourself during your waking as well as your sleeping moments.  I reached the Holy Crap stage while I was at work today.  When I did, I took a moment to run down to the green room and snap a couple of pictures so I can help move the others I'm working with into the Holy Crap stage as well. Most of them won't take more than a nudge to get there, but one in particular seems throughly ensconced in the "we have PLENTY of time" stage.  He even offered to help me complete my tasks, which is more than just a little ironic, because he is one of the primary reasons I'm floundering in the Holy Crap stage right now.

For your amusement, here is a run-down of the situation as it stands at this moment...

The Separate Scenes, and their stages of development:

The Ocean - this mainly consists of fabric waves, which will be awesome when completed, but...  they're not.  The plan calls for two separate lines of fabric waves, one in the pit just in front of the stage, and one on the stage, further back - probably somewhere around the mid-curtain.  Each wave line will have 4 or maybe even 5 separate pieces, each held vertically by 2 actors.  the blue ribbons of fabric you see in the picture above is one of the fabric waves.  I have 1 completely done, and 3 more mostly done. that means with 5 in a row, I need 6 more... plus the extra tall one to conceal Ariel as she walks up the stairs and onstage from the side door.  Here's  a picture of the finished wave on the stage floor...

...can you say Holy Crap?

oh yeah, and this scene will also have a BOAT in it.  Kids will carry this boat onto the stage and then set it down behind the waves where they will then go about their sailorly duties, such as swabbing the deck, etc.  Here's the boat:

This boat is hinged in the middle so that when the kids cross the stage and arrive backstage on the other side, they can fold it up in order to get the whole thing behind the curtains until we need it again.  This is a cruddy brown color because this was OOPS paint that I got at Home Depot - 10.00 a gallon for paint is a vast improvement over 35.00 a gallon for paint that is not an ugly color... and who cares on the primer color, anyway?  It still needs a second (real) coat of the good brown color, and then I roll on faux wood grain on top.  Wondering - do you think we should paint the back side as well?

The Beach - This plan is for sand dunes on one side, with maybe a beach fence, some grasses, and a couple of rocks.  The rough interior of a rock is here:

See the curved wire on top of the plywood?  It's just sitting there because we need some hammer-in staples to attach the wire to the wood.  Or we need an air staple gun to shoot the staples into place.  Then I cover the wire with the screening I purchased, then we spray insulation foam onto that to make it look rock-like. THEN we paint it.  Notice all the times I used the word THEN?  Each "THEN" is a separate day.  Just saying.  And I need about 4 of these rocks.  Holy Crap.   If I really run out of time, I am going to cancel the dunes altogether and blame it on Hurricane Sandy.

King Triton's Court - This is a full cast scene, so there's not a whole lot of scenery, unfortunately, me and my big ideas - I made the planned on pieces elaborate and huge.  King Triton's throne will go on the platform shown in the top picture, I'll add it again here below just for clarity...

See the large box in the center?  You can't see the steps cause they're in the back.  In a perfect world, I would have painted this numerous times with lots of shades of coral and pink but THIS IS NOT A PERFECT WORLD.  I had this paint, and I showed four girls how to dab it on, and I think it's good enough.  There will be two additional side pieces so that king Triton can walk up one side of his platform and down the other side, so he won't have to look ungainly while maneuvering his merman tail.  I was also thinking, these platforms will be ALL THE WAY BACK by the back curtain, and the audience probably won't see much of them.  What they WILL see HASN"T EVEN BEEN BUILT YET.  That is, a seat made of tubes with an open clamshell on top.  And his seat will be flanked by two 8 foot pillars, painted to look round, and each one topped by a repurposed Starbucks-like mermaid traced into foam core.  Now everyone say, GREAT PILLARS of HOLY CRAP!

Triton is also supposed to carry a trident that lights up for when he casts impressive spells, but I'm hearing that Hurricane Sandy may have shorted out his Trident.  We'll have to see...

The Palace Hall - I'm not even sure what goes in this scene except for a large dining room table and some chairs.  We have a smallish dining room table in the basement prop room, and a can scrounge up some chairs, but they don't match, so I might have to staple some fabric chair covers on them.  oh, and the director wants windows with curtains on them in this scene.  Here is my one window in it's current state:

Sad, right?  and Calico curtains don't really belong on a palace, do they?  Which means I'm either making them or taking a trip to the cheap curtain store.  In all seriousness, I think it might be better to have the lighting guy project a very large bank of window shapes onto the back curtain instead.  Go ahead and google "Little Mermaid Palace Hall Scene" and tell me that's not what you find as well.  

Palace Kitchen - this is more prop heavy then scenery heavy.  I originally thought I had to make a freestanding oven for the chef to run around while he chases Sebastian, but thank GOD I don't have to do that.  I just have to make a extreme fish-dishes - you know, the kind where the fish look exaggeratedly large and sad, stuck between two pieces of bread.  Yeah, fun stuff.  I'll save this for last.  when I am at my witt's-end.

Ursula's Lair - Ursula's lair will be shaped like a whale skeleton, but each of the ribs will be free-standing and held up by a Poor Unfortunate Soul.  These are the poor slobs that Ursula took advantage of in her quest for power before the play starts.  They will be dressed in grey, and looking rather glum.  Ursula's tentacles will be intermingled with these bones.  Oh, by the way, did you know that Ursula has 8 tentacles?  Apparently, I may have told someone to make 4 tentacles, but even if, in a moment of idiocy, I did say that, wouldn't most people know that an OCTopus has 8 tentacles?

Oh, and I also have to make a bowl on a stand that has a fan and a light concealed inside of it so that she can mix her spells in there, and some fabric flames can shoot up in the air via the fan, and illuminated by the lights.  Cool.  But I may have to cut it out if I don't have time.

The Grotto - Ariel keeps her stuff in a grotto.  We have a shelving unit that I had great plans for, but then it was decided that what we really need is a SMALL piece, which is also fine.  But we need some way to show whole human-stuff treasures, and broken human-stuff treasures.  So I finally came up with the idea that the backs of the open shelving would spin to show broken stuff on one side, and whole stuff on the other side.  which means, construction man has to make this, I have to paint broken AND whole stuff, and then I have to round out the whole thing to make it look like a pile of rocks.


Finally, there's The Lagoon - The main piece in the lagoon is this dingy...

Which was loaned to us by the science teacher, Mr. K - he ROCKS! I think it looks awesome, and weathered and now I don't have the build a dingy.  Ariel and Eric sit in the dingy and almost kiss while the boat is surrounded by literally DOZENS of animal cut-outs, all painted and highlighted with florescent paint by ME.  There were supposed to be some overhanging trees as well, but you know with the hurricane and all... Holy crap.  

Slacker Elf

I've been surrounded by elf-talk for the last few weeks, so I decided our house needed an elf, too.   We talked about all the fun stuff our elf would do, and we were looking forward to joining the world full of homes with Christmas elves.

However, all we could find was this guy.

He's a bit of a slacker.  There is no hanging from light fixtures, flirting with Barbies or making snow angels out of flour (by the way, to any future elves: I'll turn you into a dog-toy faster than you can say "Christmas cookies" if you attempt that one).  Our guy has no personality, or, as someone once said about me, he's a bit "flat."

I'm not amused by my elf's sluggish behavior.  Just a little while ago I caught him just lounging around on the couch, and I thought, maybe he's as new to this elf game as I am so I thought I'd give him a few suggestions on how to carry out his elf-ly duties:

Dear Elfie, 

You look bored, so I thought I'd offer a few suggestions on how you can spend your evenings.  You can start by unloading the dishwasher.

...and loading it up again with the dirty dishes.  Maybe you can teach some other people how to do it, too...

I could use someone to clean out the fridge.

Emptying the trash would be nice, too.  If you really feel the need to perform some acrobatic stunts, you can do a couple of back flips or get stuck in the pail or something.  I'm leaving that to your discretion.    I promise to laugh. 

I also have a WHOLE bunch of laundry that has to get done.  The kids will promise to find you amusing, too, if you put their folded laundry away so I don't have to ask them to do it. 

There's also a few strings of lights still sitting around, waiting for someone to hang them up.  We will all TRULY believe in elf magic if you can get those tacked up while we're all sleeping.

How about entertaining the dog?  That would be FABULOUS!!  Just be careful, Elfie!  She CHEWS EVERYTHING!  How do you think that piece of duct tape got to look like that?   

And last, but not least, if you fill the wood rack on the porch with wood, I will be happy to see you then spend the following day resting on a shelf near the fire.  

Welcome to our house.  ;-)

  

10 Rules for Re-Gifting

I'm not against re-gifting as a rule, although, every time I try to do it myself, it makes me squirm.  It IS a form of recycling, and recycling is good, right?   Still, I really think there is a time and place for everything, and that includes re-gifting, so if you're considering delving into this form of recycling, here are some rules to live by...

1.  The gift must fit the taste of the recipient.  Your brother and sister-in-law don't want a bright blue, foldable Chinese-themed waste paper basket when their house is decorated in a country theme.

Which leads to  rule number 2..

2.  The gift can't be hideous.  If it's hideous, throw it out.  Your niece may have loved Miss Piggy as a girl, but that does not mean she will appreciate a hand-lotion dispenser in the shape of a pig sitting upright and wearing an unbelievably large floppy-brimmed hat. Save her years of therapy, (or yourself years of being the butt of a secret Christmas laugh) by throwing items such as this one out before you are tempted to re-gift them.

3.  Make sure your re-gift will go undetected by the original gift giver.  If someone gives you a comforter set, for example, at a family gathering, don't regift it to another family member next Christmas.  It's just not cool.  And no, your postman probably doesn't want a comforter set.

4.  If you've complained about a gift, you've got to keep track of who listened to your complaints...  remember to cross that person off as a potential recipient next year...  "oh, so THIS is the obscenely fluffy bathrobe in the weird tie-dyed pattern that you talked about last year..."

5.  Be honest, when appropriate.  "Hey, Melinda, do you like Starbucks?" "Yeah!" "Do you want this 25.00 gift card?"  "Someone gave me this, and I don't like coffee." "Sure!" See, everyone is happy here.  Of course, this person didn't try to pass it off that he'd purchased this gift card just for me.

6.  Try to be timely.  No one wants a Cabbage Patch Doll or a Pet Rock, or a Rubik's Cube now, even if they are still in their original packaging... unless, maybe they are the stars of a show called American Pickers...

7.  Don't unwrap your gift and try it out before deciding that you don't like it and you want to regift it.  Although, if you try to pass off an unwrapped, grungy looking gift as a real present, you may be beyond hope.

8.  Known re-gifts can be funny, and part of Christmas tradition if done right.  For example, if someone gets a very pointy Santa statue one Christmas and everyone else is envious and wants their OWN pointy Santa, you could start a tradition of re-gifting Pointy Santa every year - he can be something like the Stanley-Cup of Christmas.  

9. Don't give someone a re-gift that is just a sad reminder of a larger gift you got yourself.  For example, let's say you are a fan of expensive designer bags, like Dooney and Bourke, and you like to buy them from QVC, where they occasionally come with matching key-fobs.  And if you get yourself one of these nice handbag and keyfob combos, don't then re-gift your tiny little keyfob onto your poor secretary, who may have gone so far as to purchase all the items for your annual Christmas party, for which you got all the compliments.  Your secretary might not even give a rat's ass about Dooney and Bourke key fobs.  She will most likely open the key fob and think, "What the...?"
Just hypothetically, of course.

10.  And finally, if you are the recipient of a thoughtless re-gift, you can always rewrap it and give it back to the original sender next year.

Happy Holiday Shopping!  

Fabric Ocean - Construction (for The Little Mermaid)

 As you may remember from an earlier post of mine, I thought we'd do fabric waves for The Ocean, which makes an appearance a few times in the play.  I showed this drawing to the director...

...but she wasn't really buying it.  I was bummed out about this, since she kept talking about wooden cut-out waves, and I thought my fabric waves would be so much better.  Finally, one night when I was at home I decided to make a miniature version of my fabric waves.  I scrounged up some blue fabric and cut it into long strips.  I cut a piece of cardboard into shorter strips and attached the long fabric strips with my scrapbooking ATG 700 gun (crafters, you seriously have to get one of these if you don't already have one).  

When I brought in my sample the next day, she loved it.  "Ohhhh..... That's what you mean.  Oh yeah, I think that will work!  that will be really nice!"  I'd post a picture of the sample I showed her except I can't find it.  I may have left it at school.  Anyway, at that moment, it dawned on me that many people can't picture things unless they have some concrete prompts to help them in the visualization process.  I tucked that little tidbit away in my memory bank for when I tried to sell the other scenes...

So luckily, the director's husband, who is one of the two people doing construction for the play, CAN picture things.  The three of us had an informal meeting last Friday night, and I pitched all of my ideas to him, and he gets them.  We worked out a concrete plan for the waves.  Here it is:

We're going to have 4 groups of two kids making up the front wave.  These kids will be standing in the pit in front of the stage.  Each set of two kids will have one "wave" that measures 24" tall and 10' long. Each kid will be holding it by a handle, and they'll hold it pretty much at eye level.  The bottom of it will cover the edge of the floor and it will be just high enough to conceal the feet of the actors from the audience as they come on stage.  Any higher and audience members in the front rows won't be able to see kids further back on the stage.  

I purchased 6 yards of each of the fabrics I've shown above.  I'm cutting them all into strips about 2 to 4" wide and 10 feet long.   See below...

I cut it on the floor and weighed down the fabric with a couple of heavy items so the fabric didn't shift too much when I was cutting it.  Then I mixed the fabric in random mixes of colors (oh, the white-ish fabric you see in the top picture is extremely sheer, so I may add that on top of the other fabric later or use it somewhere else - it's too sheer to stand on it's own).   Here's my planned mixture of fabric strips...

Once the fabric is mounted on the wooden strips with the handles, the kids will be able to pull it taught across the stage.  They're going to walk back and forth, giving the impression of water moving.  It should be really cool.  

I'll post more pictures when it's fully assembled.  

Thankful

In honor of Thanksgiving, I’ve made a list of things that I’m thankful for, as well as things I'm learning.  It’s broader than the typical list because I wanted it to encompass absolutely everything.  Here is my list, in no particular order.  Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.  

Family

When I was younger, I took family for granted.  As I’ve gotten older, I’m learning that just because someone is technically related to you, doesn’t mean they want to have a relationship with you.  Many times, this really can’t be helped.  You’ve been thrown into the same family by destiny and the rest can’t be helped.  I’m learning to appreciate my family members with all of their flaws.  A grown-ups we create families of our own, and they are flawed, but dear as well.  Every one of us is human, after all.

Friends

I am learning that friendship is fluid.  On the journey of life, friends come together and drift apart.  Some friends drift into your life and then back out again, based on circumstance.  Other friendships stand the test of time, and most likely you will drift together and apart, like waves on the ocean.  It’s all ok; all these friendships are valuable, each in their own way.  I am thankful for them all.

Adaptability

Change is not my forte.  I am learning that no matter how I resist it, some things are going to change no matter what I do.  I can cry and resist and carry on, or I can let the wave of change take me away from what I knew, and drop me off in a new land.  I might not like it as much as the old land, but it is not my choice.  If I accept this, I can adapt to just about anything.  Like a tree in the wind, the more I am able to bend, the less likely I am to break.  

Positivity

I am learning that positivity is a gift.  I work with someone who is, as I like to call him, a glass half empty.  I sarcastically joke with him that he just needs to look on the bright side.  He responds by calling me a Pollyanna.  I say that it’s all in the perspective.  He says, “but I’m a realist.”  I say that we are both looking at the same glass, with the same amount of water in it.  He calls the glass half empty, but I choose to call it half full.

Health

Good health is another thing many of us take for granted. It needs constant nourishment to sustain itself, and I’m also learning that it’s interrelated with all of the above.  

Employment

Many of us Americans long for jobs we find fulfilling.  We want to do, as Oprah says, “what we LOVE”  Well, no offense, Oprah, but I’ve learned that not everyone can LOVE what they do.  But we can find things to love about what we do, and we can appreciate the usefulness of it... and the freedom that employment give us.  For example, I appreciate that my job gives me a nice steady salary that allows me to pay my bills, interact with other people, and allows me the time to be a mom who can be there for her kids...  all important things that are not to be taken lightly. 

Creativity

I’ve learned that not everyone has it.  Everyone can nurture it in themselves, but when it’s naturally present in abundance, it is a true gift.  While everyone doesn’t need it for a happy life, most people want it.  When you’ve got it, I think it’s your duty to use it to make people happy.  You should use it to make people smile, appreciate life, others, and what it means to be human.  Creativity should be used for good and not for evil; it’s a gift and a responsibility.  I’m learning to use my creativity more freely, share it more often, and appreciate it  every day.  

Experience

Experience is the secret weapon of age.  I appreciate it as only a person with some life experience can.  As we age and our bodies show their wear and tear, our experiences only become richer and more nuanced.  While our stories were short and sparse when we were younger, now they are long and interesting.  I am learning to keep my mouth shut when someone with less experience tells me something as if they know the Complete Answer - they need to arrive at their own more nuanced conclusions on their own, in their own time.    

Faith

“I don’t know if I believe in God, because I’ve seen no concrete evidence that there IS a God,” a friend once told me.  “Well, if you had evidence, then you couldn’t call it faith, then, could you?” I replied.  I don’t know the facts.  I don’t know who is correct and who is not, I only know that I believe.  It is logical to me, even though this logic is not based on traditional logic.  I believe because it seems right to me, I feel its rightness.  I don’t have any empirical evidence, I just know it, and my knowing says, how could it not be so?  I am thankful for my faith, but I am learning just because I don’t want to push my views on others, doesn’t mean that they do’t want to push their beliefs on me.  This is true of religious as well as secular beliefs.   Some people think they know better than the rest of us.  I’m learning to take a deep breath, and listen with an open mind.  I just hope they learn to do the same. 

This Moment

This moment is the only one we can live in.  I’ve heard some version of this phrase for my whole life, but over the years, it’s taken on more meaning for me.  (see Experience, above).  The past is done, and unchangeable.  The future is a question mark.  The only time we have is this time... right NOW.  In each and every one of my This Moments, I have choices.  I can make good choices or bad choices.  If I live each moment independently of the other moments, then I can make changes in an instant (see Adaptability, above).  If I take each moment separately and independently of every other moment, then I have before me, a wealth of possibility.  

Ursula's Lair - another scene from The Little Mermaid Jr.

Ursula's Lair is another scene from The Little Mermaid.  If you remember, Ursula is the sea witch, and her hide-out is a dark, sinister place depicted in purples, black and pinks.  It's where she looks into her crystal ball and bosses around her two henchmen, the electric eels, Flotsam and Jetsam.

At first I thought I'd make the lair out of the turned-around and seaweed draped columns from King Triton's castle, but the more I thought about that, the more problematic it seemed.  I'd have to really disguise the columns so they wouldn't look like columns, and it would take a lot of doing to get hanging seaweed (my disguise of choice) to look like it was floating UP instead of hanging DOWN.  Hence, plan B, shown above, which I think might be even better.  It's a whale skeleton.

I take the platform with the step shown in the Triton's Court scene, and add another step or two on the back.  This can attach with some swinging latches on each side of the platform.  (Don't know what you call them, but there is a peg like thing on one side, and a swirling hook on the other side that swivels around and then loops over the peg.)  Big whale bones would be attached to the back, taller platform, but the front platform (also used for Triton's throne) would have square peg-holes in the top that the bones would slip into.  I think I'd have to make the whale bones out of 3/4 inch plywood so it stands upright.  There would be a pair of bones on the step, and two pairs on the platform.  They'd have to bow out quite a bit toward the front part so that the audience can see what's going on in the back, but it would make a nice creepy look and best of all, it moves the action UP into that problematic vertical space.  Ursula could climb up and down the stairs to accentuate her points, and she'd be framed by those whale bones.  In front of the platform there could be a pointy crystal-ball holder and get this - if I can find a clear, plastic ball shaped item, WE CAN MAKE THE CRYSTAL BALL LIGHT UP with our battery operated light packs we bought last year - Whooo HOOOO!!  LOVE IT!   You know what else I love about this scene?  It's not much work for me, other than designing it.  The painting is relatively easy.   Moving right along...  

Update:  I heard a little earlier today that instead of a crystal ball for Ursula, we're going to do a bowl with a fan hidden inside blowing some billowy fabric up in the air...  which solves my problem of locating a plastic bowl to use as a crystal ball.  I might still even be able to use lights in the bottom, too.

The Little Mermaid Jr. - sketch of King Triton's Court

This is my sketch the King Triton's Court Scene.  This scene appears 3 times in the play.  Ideally, this is the layout I'd like to use, but as I'm sitting here sketching my ideal scene, I'm realizing that this stuff has to move on and off the stage VERY QUICKLY, because it changes in a matter of minutes between when the curtain closes one one scene and opens on another - yikes!

Some scenes will take place in front of the closed curtain, which is handy for me because there will be more time to move things behind the curtains - other transitions - we might need 20 very organized kids moving things on and off the stage to get things done.  At any rate, here's my plan for this scene:

The centerpiece of King Triton's Court is his throne.  I had originally sketched this out with the throne made of round cardboard cement forms with a cut-out piece of plywood for the back and for the seat as well.  When we went down into the prop room on Friday, we found a tall-backed wicker chair that the director wants me to turn into the throne.  So that means that I have to cover the wicker back and seat of the chair with fabric and shape it so that it looks like an open clam shell.  Maybe we'll use some of those cardboard tubes to cover the bottom of the chair, but I just don't know.  This whole chair will be sitting on top of the one step platform we used in last year's play - the one that I painted to look like bricks.  the advantage to that is that it is large enough, and it already has an appropriate step so that Triton can climb up easily to sit on his throne.  My plan is to cover the sides of the platform with some shaped wire and then spray foam so that it looks like the throne is sitting on a very regal pile of rocks.

The controversial parts here are the columns - I was aiming for something that fills the vertical space on stage.  It's not that easy to do, since although we have a pole hanging up and fly space above, the pole doesn't move.  My plan here calls for 4 (we can certainly cut it down to 2, but doesn't 4 look regal?) columns that are about 10 feet tall and approximately 2 feet wide.  They'd have triangular legs, kind of like chalkboards do, with wheels on the bottom.  We could cover up the legs with round pieces like columns would have - I tried to show it in the picture.

The top of each column would be graced with a nice mermaid cut-out.  I'm going to take a picture from the internet, copy it onto a clear sheet, and blow it up to the appropriate size using an overhead projector, and then trace it into some foam core.  Each one could be mounted on each column using  velcro, so they can be removed and the columns can be swiveled around to the back side for another scene.

I planned on using the columns to hold long pieces of kelp seaweed in another scene.