Merchant's Cart: On Stage

Merchant of Venice

To finish up an early thread, the cart I had been working on this spring made its way onto the stage in STC's production of "The Merchant of Venice." It looks pretty much the way I had left it at the end of my internship. Some parts were simplified, which I think is really a good thing - it was a very busy cart before. The cheese wheel, maybe some baskets and the clothesline for meat products and other hanging what-nots was removed. Looks like the pole for the cheese wheel was re-purposed. Definitely some final touches were done after I had gone, like some more set dressing and paint treatment. I'm very happy with the outcome. I'll try to find a photo where the whole cart is visible.

Headless Body: Completed

Severed Neck Detailing

And for the final touches: make it gross. Cloton's head was cut off so, it needed to look like such. I built up the neck with various blocks and coils of upholstery foam. The esophagus was a bit of carved down pipe foam. The bit of spine was simply a piece of white felt cut to shape and given some dimension and sheen with hot melt glue. More hot melt glue was generously.

The painting got a little tricky since one type of paint would stick to the latex but not the glue and the other type of paint would stick to the glue and not the latex. I found that I could apply the first paint and wipe it off wherever it wasn't going to stick and repeat the process with the second paint. This seamed to work alright. In any case everything got tinted and didn't seem to rub off excessively anywhere. I knew that more paint and reel blood was going to be added later anyhow.

Oh yes, the neck also needed to have a hollow in it which I built into the esophagus. In the production of Cymbeline, grief stricken Imogen marks herself with blood from the body, thinking it's the body of Posthumus. Therefore we tucked a little squeezey-toy full of reel blood into the neck of the body so it would be easy for the actor to access without leaking fake blood all over stage.

In the end the fake body still looked like a fake body, BUT it was a pretty darn good fake body with a pretty darn gross severed neck. Hopefully it will see some stage time again in the future.

Headless Body: Skin

Headless Body with Top Coat

Nearly completed now. With all the foam and poly batting in place to build out the form, the headless body was ready for skin. Nylon is the easiest and least expensive material I have found for making skin. We had a lot of large pairs of nylon tights in stock in the shop so I just took a couple pairs and with some whip stitching and clever wrapping I was able to cover the whole body in two layers of nylon quickly and easily.

As a final step in building the skin layer I coated the nylon with a thinned down layer of latex. In retrospect I ought to have skipped this step as it greatly reduced flexibility. I later had to cut back into the form and remove some of the padding to regain the lost flexibility. The intention was to make the nylon a little more durable so that it wouldn't snag and run. The thought was good but the material needs to be even more stretchy or more lightly applied than the latex I used.

Demonstration of Flexibility

Headless Body: Padding

Headless Body with Polyester Batting

After the frame was completed I started to build up the form. Starting with the torso I placed layer upon layer of poly batting to build out a sort of simplified musculature. The arms and legs needed quite a bit more padding than the torso So I began building out the limbs with some cheap 1" upholstery foam. Fabri-tac and hot glue held it all in place. I didn't worry to much about using a super permanent adhesive since I knew that all the layers would be held in place with the final skin.

Headless Body: Frame Completed

Lower Half of Headless Body

With the upper half of the frame for the headless body complete it was time to finish up the lower half. The legs were previously made out of wooded dowels. The pelvis and upper thighs were carved out of a foam mannequin. The three parts were beveled so that the legs would bend properly. The legs were attached to a wooden dowel set at the hip height.

Headless Body Frame

The two halves were assembled and the frame for the headless body was complete.

As an afterthought I realize that the foam upper thigh pieces were superfluous. I used them thinking that they would restrict unnatural movement of the legs much in the same way that the sculpted epoxy was used to restrict the movement of the arms. As it turns out any unnatural movement would have been eliminated by the shape of the pelvic piece, and the final layers of foam padding. The same might be true of the shoulder sockets but of this I'm not so sure. It would have been better to have had a little more flexibility in the end.

Headless Body: Lower Spine

Upper Half of Headless Body Back View

Here we can clearly see the stretch fabric used to bridge the gap between the shoulder blades and chest. We can also see the purple plumbers epoxy used to sculpt the joint for the shoulders.

Next the lower portion of the spine was attached. A bungee cord was threaded through the five fiberglass plates and pvc rod, then it was tightly tied in place.

Headless Body: Arms

Shoulder Socket

After the pvc upper spinal column was placed in the rib cage I added support to the inside walls of the fiberglass shell. For the lower, more flexible half I used semi rigid foam and for the upper half I used a rigid foam. The foam was layer on the inside walls but I choose not to completely fill the chest cavity so that I could still have the option of adding sand bag weights later.

The gap between the shoulder blade and chest needed to be bridged before I could attach the arms. For this I used heavy duty stretch fabric.

Then I could final attach the arms. Using plumbers epoxy I sculpted a sort of stopper that would restrict the movement of the arm. This prevented the shoulder from pivoting or bending in an unnatural manner.

Headless Body: Spine & Shoulders

PVC Upper Spinal Column

The fiberglass ribcage was cut away from the mannequin and the cut seam was sealed with additional fiberglass. Then a support rod for the upper portion of the spinal column was set inside the rib cage. For this a piece of pvc pipe was bolted to the fiberglass and a cross bar was placed to hinge to the shoulder blades. I decided on the pvc rather than wooden dowel because it was the easiest way for me to connect the upper and lower portions of the spinal column. The lower portion, five segmented plates, are strung together with a bungee cord. To connect the two sections I simply had to thread the bungee cord through the pvc pipe.

Hinged Shoulder Blades

The shoulder blades were cut away from the fiberglass ribcage and reattached as hinged pieces so that they would have some movement.

Headless Body: Spine

Headless Body "Spinal Column"

So I wanted to design something for the spine that would bend a reasonable amount in each direction. That is, it would bend forward far more than backward and would also be able to twist to a certain degree. What I came up with was a set of five plates which were beveled. I ran a bungee cord down the center of the plates. I also ran a cord down each side to restrict the degree of twisting.

Headless Body: Fiberglass

Fiberglass Ribcage on Mannequin

After the wooden limbs were built it was time to start making the torso. I began by constructing the rib cage and shoulders using laminated fiberglass and semi rigid polyurethane. I wanted the rib cage to have a little bit of flexibility so I used only woven fiberglass. For the collar bone, sternum, shoulders and shoulder blades I used an additional heavy layer of mat fiberglass.
The piece was removed from the model by cutting up the back and sealing the seam with a strip of mat fiberglass.

Headless Body: Beginning

Leo Marks as Cloten, and Mark Bedard as Posthumus with the Headless Body Prop

(Photo: Jay Westcott/TBD | Date: Feb. 02, 2011)

http://www.tbd.com/blogs/tbd-arts/2011/02/the-cymbeline-cast-has-a-pain-in-the-neck-8076.html

The most challenging and interesting prop I got to build for STC was the headless body of Cloton for our production of Shakespeare's "Cymbeline." This project was very involved and a lot of fun, drawing from a number of skills including puppetry, molding & casting, and soft goods. Once I got over feeling daunted by the task I dove right in.

Wooden Dowel Limbs for Headless Body Prop

The process started with a sketch. We wanted to build a body that would look as realistic as possible given the time frame and budget. The hardest part in making a fake body is to build it so that the limbs and spine bend naturally and flop under their own weight. So I sketched out what types of joints I would be using in each section of the body.

I started by building the legs and arms using leather joints in notched wooden dowels. The leather was a very easy way to hinge the joints and allow a little bit of twisting between the upper and lower segments of the limbs. The notched dowels were cut so that they would bend only one direction. We didn't want any hyper-extending elbows or knees. The wooden dowels also gave the limbs enough weight to flop naturally.

Merchant's Cart: Designer Revisions

Cart Layout 3

Andrew, our scenic designer for "Merchant of Venice" at STC came into the shop the other day to take a look at some of the work. He rearranged, simplified and clarified the cart layout. It now feels much less boutiquey and much more practical, which is great. Today I did some painting and distressing to tone down the colors and get the cart looking a little more used.

Today was my last day working for STC. It was bittersweet parting; I'm very excited to be moving to the next job but will miss a lot of the people I've been working with. I had an extraordinary year here in DC. I made many friends and at least touched upon every one of my goals: hand stitching, machine sewing, millinery, leather working, dying, carpentry, welding, tool & hardware identification - and those are just the new skills, there are many more I also improved upon.

Thanks STC, it's been really great.

Merchant's Cart: Revisions

Merchant's Cart Revised Layout

And then we revised the plan.

Merchant's Cart: Layout

General Layout for Merchant's Cart

And now we have a plan...

Merchant's Cart: Framework

Existing Cart Frame

I've now begun construction of the merchant cart for The Merchant of Venice at Shakespeare Theatre Company. We have a very neat old cart frame to work with which presented a few little challenges in order to expand the size of the cart bed.

New Cart Bed

I put together a box for the cart bed built to accommodate the position of the wheels. I think it looks quite a bit like a little row boat still, but it's getting there. The next step is to start altering the box and planning out the layout for the wares.

Merchant's Cart

Cart Draft

At the prop shop we've been working on the build for "The Merchant of Venice." One of my projects is the construction of the merchandise cart. We have a frame that our designer likes and I have been asked to make the cart body ( a wooden insert ) in such a way that the cart will be larger while still using the existing frame.

Electric Shovel

Hangar Theatre’s production of “Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel” included a few more shovels besides Mary Anne. The costume for the bright and lively Electric shovel included two clamping shovels, which were my responsibility to create. Grill tongs, trash cans, dust pans and foam coolers did the trick. Thank you Dollar Tree.

Mike Mulligan & His Steam Shovel: Mary Anne

One of my favorite assignments this past summer was creating the shovels for the Kiddstuff show, “Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel.” I really enjoyed working on the Kids shows which generally involved over-size and/or quirky and imaginative “junk art” pieces.

The script for our production of “Mike Mulligan” included four different kinds of shovels: Mary Anne – Mike’s steam shovel, Diesel, Electric and Nuclear shovels. Mary Anne was a straight forward design. The others allowed me to be a little more inventive since well, who knows what a nuclear shovel should look like anyway?

Welcome to Edinburgh

Our first mainstage show, "The 39 Steps" required a lot of scenic props pretty much all of which were on casters: door frames, window frames, sign posts, and window & door add-ons. For the most part Tyler made the scenic props, but I did play my part by taking care of the surface treatment.

My favorite were the signs for "Edinburgh" and "Alt Na Shelach." The reason they were fun: 1/4" blue foam. It's been our friend for a number of projects this summer. SO much easier to cut letters out of blue foam then to try using a scroll saw (which we don't have).

Three Days Remaining

Rectangular Foam Capital

With only three days left until opening night for “Joyful Noise,” we’re going to be very busy in the woodshop. The rectangular foam capitals are close to being complete; with little more to do than some detail work and a paint job.

Round Foam Capitals
As of last Thursday, the round capitals were in the process of being foamed out. Over the next few days I’ll have to design and carve them, and considering the time constraints they may not be as intricate as the rectangular capitals.

Pediment

Archway
The archway and the pediment are well underway. Surface details are being applied to the pediment and are soon to be applied to the archway. The floor needs to be painted and a few props need completed, then we’ll be underway. It looks like for the next three days my senior thesis is going to have to go on the backburner a bit.

Lesser Coverts

This weekend I hope to be able to work extensively on my thesis piece. I need to finish painting the acetate for both sets of feathers, and complete the other set of lesser coverts before I can move on to the mechanics.