Beauty and the Beast Panto 2012

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Beauty and the Beast Panto 2012
Beauty and the Beast
Creative
Director Alasdair Hawthorne
Writer Alan McHugh
Designer Robin Peoples
Lighting Designer Roy Herd
Assistant Lighting Designer Oliver Gorman
Sound Designer Audrey Wilson
Stats
Venue New Athenaeum

Story

When he mocks the advances of beautiful Madame DeTestable, Sasha, the selfish and arrogant Marquis, is transformed into a hideous beast, and only has until the first snowfall of winter to make the plain Belle Atiseau declare her love for him … or he will remain a beast forever. As he hides in his chateau, his servants, Michel and Michelle bring Belle to work for him, and do their best to make him change his arrogant ways. However, Madame DeTestable - with her hapless son, Marcel - have plans to destroy the chateau and everyone in it. But Belle is not alone! With her in the chateau is her bumbling papa, Monsieur Atiseau, her tomboy best pal, Bibi, and Bibi’s mum - the brash, loud and sometimes rude, Bette Bouffant – the woman with the biggest bouffant in all France! Will Madame DeTestable manage to destroy the chateau and all in it? Will Sasha be able to change his ways to make Belle fall for him in time? And will Monsieur Atiseau ever notice Bette’s buffed-up bouffant?

Crew






Fit Up Images

Technical Stage Management

Overview

Stage Plans

Masking

Wings

The masking for the panto required that the wings be completely masked, yet quickly and safely accessible for large numbers of cast and large props (e.g. Hairdresser’s chair, sweetie truck); the stage also had to remain quite open.

This was achieved using 4 pairs of doglegs (see Masking plan) the frames were pulled out on hemp lines to the grid and the 4x12 legs tied on. Importantly the dog legs were only tied onstage far enough to mask the entrances and the excess was doubled back.

(Note: There are only 6 dog leg frames in stock – we constructed 2 extra, using scaff and key clamps)

Borders

5 Borders were used for this performance

  • Winch Bar – 16x5m
  • CW8 – 16x5m (with 1.8m Bar extensions)
  • Hemp Bar between CW12 and CW13 – 12.2x3m (On scaff bar made up of two of the 6.4m lengths joined with long key clamp)
  • Hemp Bar between CW15 and CW16 – 16x5m (On scaff bar made up to 14m using 3 scaff lengths and two long key clamps)
  • CW24 – 16x5m (with 1.8m bar extensions)

All Borders are conduited

Masking Notes

A single 4x8 hard masker (covered in a large piece of black serge tat) was propped up using a stage brace and stage weight. This was to mask the offstage entrance into the USL tower when the door in the tower was used as an entrance and exit offstage. It was placed tight against the tower behind the 3rd soft dogleg masking.

The entrance behind the Door USC in the main tower had a black tat curtain behind it to mask any light spill from void entrance or platform ladder safety lamp.

A 10x3m border was tied along the back of the pit-lift to mask off the main area of the pit and the trap entrance there.

Notable Set Elements

Dungeon Trap and Walk up Treads

A trap was used DSC during the final scene of Act 1; the performer came up from underneath it. It had a standard trap door which was pushed open from below, however under this there was a metal grill as this was supposed to be the entrance to the “Dungeon”. To open it the performer below had to push up through the grill and heave the top door open (the direction then had another cast member pulling open the grill) as this was a bit of a tricky manoeuvre, the cast member was given plenty of time to practice and become comfortable.

Below the trap the walk up treads were used with the long section from the trap down to a 8x4 steeldeck on 982mm legs and down from this the short set of corresponding treads . This was installed by Construction.

Folding Towers

There were three towers in the set which trucked on the stage and folded or unfolded for different scenes.

The tall 5 sided tower set USR opened up into the “Hall”, it was moved by 2 cast members and 1 crew member in costume, to open it was rotated to CS and then opened from there. It was refolded with a cast member inside, so a handle was added by the door to aid his balance.

The 2 DS towers started off as the Chateau Gates with two flown sections completing the “wall”, these were then flown out and the towers folded and taken to each side of the stage, these towers were more tricky to manoeuvre as while they were shorter that the USR Tower, they were heavier and bulkier, also to create the desired effect they had to move together, so required plenty of practice was required. The towers were moved by 1 crew member and 2 cast members to each tower. For the Maze scene in Act 2 the towers were rotated to reveal one side which was painted to look like part of the maze setting.

Flown Elements

Automated Truss

There were two 4m pieces of square truss that were flown on the Automation winches; these were to fly in during the show at different angles for lighting effects.

Centre

The Points are from SR to SL (7600,-4200), (7600,-800), (7360,800) & (7360,4200). (Up CL, SR-SL)

The two sections of truss sat upstage above the Chateau, all four winches were required to create the desired effect during flying. However the winches could only sit side by side in the centre section of the grid; as such the truss was slightly staggered in order to fit the winches in. The automation lines ran straight down to the truss and were attached onto the truss by a short strop and the wedge socket. The automation was operated from the flyfloor with a direct line of sight to it from there.

Snow Drop

During the “Chateau Crumble” scene the director requested rubble to fall from above the castle into the archways on either side of the main Chateau tower. To do this we rigged 4 buckets on 2 trapeze bars (to allow easy resetting – the counterweight bar could not come into a working height due to the tower); from the base of these buckets we ran lines up to the counterweight bar and off to the nearest flyfloor. When these lines were pulled, the buckets tipped and the lightweight “rubble” fell out.

Equipment Required

  • x4 Plastic Buckets
  • x2 long (12m) lengths of sash
  • x10 short (1m) lengths of sash
  • x6 small pulleys
  • Cable ties
  • x4 6m drifts
  • x2 1m (roughly) aluminium scaff pipes
  • x8 barrel clamps
  • x8 1 tonne shackles
  • Enough “rubble” to fill all four buckets (stage management source/make)

"Castle Crumble"

Rubble Drop

Pit Bridge

Access was required from the stage straight into the auditorium; as such we put in a pit bridge.

Equipment Used

  • x1 8x4 Steel deck
  • x14x2 steel deck
  • x4 982mm scaff legs
  • x2 2100mm scaff legs
  • x2 Doughty tank Traps
  • x2 Half key clamp feet
  • x1 4 step treads (1220 tread width)
  • x4 Hinges (to attach treads to front of stage and to Steel deck)
  • x2 M10 Bolts and nuts

Electrics

Sound

File:FOH 3.pdf

Stage Management

Dressing the Sweetie Truck

After receiving pictures of a model sweetie cart, it was the SM and ASM's job to recreate the Designer's vision from scratch. We were given a black canvas, so to speak, a painted wooden cart and our job was to decorate it full of irresistable sweets and sweetie jars. Using cellophane we created the sweetie bags and stuffed them full, ranging from marsh mallows to flying saucers to candy sticks, to create color and different textures. We covered objects in colored tissue paper, wrapping it again in cellophane, creating a shiny effect which would stand out on the stage. The two trays containing 'Liquorice All Sorts' and 'Dolly Mixtures' were made using foam, which was cut to all different sizes, layered and painted to look like real sweets. To keep it sturdy and less likely to break it was all glue gunned together with a hot glue gun, any repairs needed this is what we used which worked very well. Sweetie jars were a source (TKMAxx) and filled with various sweets. As the top of the sweetie cart was raked keeping all these sweets contained was going to be a challenge, so we decided to use liquid latex to hold sweets in place (this was non-sticky and very easy to use), this goes for the bags of sweets on the front of the cart also. For the sweetie jars we placed carpet underlay underneath them in order to stop them from falling/slipping. This seemed to do the job and work for this type of arrangement. They lasted incredibly well throughout the shows, so as for storage we put them into the SLS props store to be reused for another show if need be.

Panto Props

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