The Trip to Bountiful images
I don't understand the true inwardness of this story. Marie wanted to use the sofa but couldn't wait to bring it to the playhouse.
So she put it behind the building with a tarp over it. The tarp blew off. The furniture stood outside in the weather for a month. Then we were supposed to bring it indoors. Right, Marie. Might work in North Dakota, but in Georgia we live in a creature-rich environment.
In our first weekend of set construction, we moved it, but it stays out under the marquee in front of the theater until its inhabitants have time to find a new home.
A highlight of the indoors component of the project was Bobby's overhead track. It's 18 feet long and will carry parts of the old house that appears in Act 3.
Bountiful is unusual for Town & Gown in requiring three full sets. A show that calls for multiple sets in our house means lots of thinking and planning, because we have next to no wing space and usually there's no question of flying scenery in. Act 1 has a ton of furniture. Act 2 takes place in two bus stations and one bus. Act 3 brings Carrie, the aged lady protagonist, back to the ghost of her hometown. So it isn't just three locales, it's three totally different ones. No possibility of swagging fabric over Act 1 to suggest Act 2.
A collection of flats stand throughout the show. Bobby's flying pieces come in between two of them. Fortunately, I figured out that we could not install overhead braces (to hold the flats vertical) in the space beneath the track. The photo at left shows our first solution, a tangle of floor braces called jacks.
Be patient, I'll show you the whole setup presently. In the picture at right you see a couple of the door units Tom has been working on. Each turns one way in Act 1 (two bedroom doors, one closet, one window) and shows its other face in Act 2 (two ticket windows, door leading to the bus bays, a restroom). It's a very good solution to the door problem. I'm especially fond of the Industrial Arts bus station in Houston, and with Tom in charge of it I'm confident it will look dirty enough to be convincing.
Carrie's childhood house consists of a front porch with a window and door. Moving this monster into place would not be as hard, really, as stacking the pieces of it in zero wing space, so we decided on "parallels," folding frames that make platforms when you drop plywood lids on them. Rick built the frames, but unfortunately I didn't have my camera out when they were ready to demonstrate. So instead you get a picture of the folded-up parallels leaning against a flat. Sorry. On the next page you get a look at the whole stage.
It was quite a satisfying first weekend. May 26-27 should see us ready for fancy scenic painting. Please visit again in a week or two.
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