The Trip to Bountiful images
This first photo is a general view of the stage on Sunday, June 10. Saturday's plan had included this feature: The moment we have four people, we strike the "house" part of the set. But for reasons I simply don't understand, we did not get four people on Saturday.
Or on Sunday.
So the house stood until Monday, when the director, assistant director, stage manager and I finally put it away. It's in the background of the photo. The foreground is occupied by the row of huge door units, which (like the Arc de Triomphe) are mostly hollow. The sofa under its slipcover is at your right, the bed obscured in the background, and odd set pieces scattered about. You can't see the ramp, which is outside the stage door.
Why did we place all the units so inconveniently? So that Marie could get started painting the walls once we had our four-person crew and the house was struck. Note that the walls are the same color as a week ago.
At left is a view of the house that Bobby built. It is hard to believe that it vanishes utterly at the end of the performance and appears again between acts the next evening. You're getting a view the audience never will, by the way, because you can see the overhead track that supports all the segments—window, door and roof. The whole affair flies in between two wing flats.
The window is actually an old casement with plexiglas panes, which have the virtue of not breaking in mid-show. Bobby found the screendoor and built its frame from scavenged lumber, which has the virtue that it will poison any crew member who licks it. The roof of course is a section of tin; the posts that support it are invisibly hinged to the onstage edge. Setting or striking the house is a complicated procedure, but almost silent; this won't be one of those plays where the people in front get a chuckle on hearing an air compressor or hammering sounds from backstage.
The Trip to Bountiful opens in just a couple of weeks, on June 22. As usual for a Town & Gown Mainstage production, the run is just two weekends long. When word gets around about the quality of the show, this will be a tough ticket, so get your reservation early at 706 208 8696.
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