Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

Scenic artist Chris bought into the "billboard" idea for the Ragedians' cart. (They were Tragedians till their initial fell off.) The photo at right shows his work so far. A debate has begun over what will become of the cart after the Georgia Theater Conference this October; Chris may put it up for sale.

On the side of the cart (there is no other side) you see representations of the Ragedians dying in many artful and imaginative ways. The engine is fittingly built from scrap.

The unit shown at left woke me up two or three nights in the last week. It will have a tree painted on one side and a pillar on the other; when the setting changes from exterior to interior in Act 1 (and back in Act 2), a Tragedian simply flips it around. Simply, hah. We planned to rig a concealed overhead winding drum and operating lines to do this without onstage aid, but the unit has to be struck at the end of Act 2, and we (I) could not manage to make it both functional and dismountable. The unit has a pivot pin on the bottom that easily drops into a socket fixed to the deck; at the top is a 30-inch spike that has to go into a little bitty hole in a unit mounted to the grid. (It was going to be shorter, but leaving out the drum meant it had to reach farther.) Let me tell you, a 30-inch spike fastened end-on to a piece of 1x4 has all the rigidity of brand-new rubber hose. It took Jace and me a good half-hour to build up the attachment and make the spike hold still for insertion. And then we couldn't see the target, a small hole in a piece of black plywood. It was like trying to plug a double bass into an overhead light socket with your eyes shut. Justin figured out that we could make the hole visible by surrounding it with glow tape. Now the unit works smoothly and quietly. A dream, instead of a nightmare ending in a cold sweat.

Sept. 1, Year 3
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