Dearly Departed
Town & Gown Players, 2000-1 Mainstage season
Pam made this blackout comedy her first Mainstage directing effort. The design used a profusion of roll drops (olio drops) in order to cut down the time used in scene shifting. Manufacturing a dozen of these monsters turned out to be a much bigger project than I had counted on. The first photo shows Chris beginning to paint a unit on its 16x8 foot stretcher. We were lucky to have fair weather for several weekends.
Not only did we have to fabricate the drops (using six-inch irrigation pipe for the battens), we also had to install a huge amount of rigging in a theater that has no rigging designed in. Jay and I spent days on ladders bolting anchors and blocks into the bar joist grid over the stage, then leading quarter-inch manila line to the specially built pinrail shown below.
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Dearly Departed