Egg carton spiders

This project, for the children's show Click Clack Boo, at Lifeline theatre feels like it belongs on Pinterest more than on my blog. In this play the animals on the farm are planning a Halloween party. I was a little confused about how to proceed with the decorations for the party at the end, until I happened across this picture. 

Of course! Cow, Pig, Hen and Duck would use the supplies they had around the farm to make the decorations. 

I made a couple of these milk jug ghosts, made some paper chains, with jute rope twisted through them, and then had the idea for these spiders. 

 First I cut a 12 egg carton in half. 

 I left the center two egg spaces whole and cut the outer four into strips to make the legs. Scissors worked well on this Styrofoam egg carton, for the recycled paper ones I found that a sharp exact-o knife or box cutter was a better tool. 

 I painted my spiders black, 

and then added googly eyes, because everything is better with googly eyes. 

Reusable "wax" seals

For Northanger Abbey, at Remy Bumppo Theatre, we had a series of letters (it seems like all Jane Austen plays have lots of letters) The director asked that all of the letters have wax seals on them. 

 To make the wax seals I started with sheets of circular label stickers from the office supply store.

 I added hot glue to the top of each sticker, creating a rough outline of the circle and filling in randomly in the center, then painted them with two coats of red paint.

 Once everything was dry they were easy to remove and stick to the letters. 

It was also fast and easy enough to make that I was able to create four full sheets. There were plenty of spares to leave with the stage managers to stick to new letters if the old ones wore out. 

*side note- I always try to create multiples of paper props to leave with the run crew as paper can be easily damaged or destroyed during the run of the show. I also often email digital copies of the paper props as an additional backup measure. 

Blood Jam

I'd like to take a moment to recommend a relatively new company producing fake blood for stage and film, using a unique recipe. The company is called Gravity and Momentum and their product is called Blood Jam. They are a local Chicago company, headed up by Greg Poljacik and Chris Yurwitz.

On a recent production, I decided to take a chance on something new, I'd been hearing a bit of a buzz around about a new blood that people wanted to try, but hadn't specifically talked to anyone who had tried it. I read a few testimonials online, was impressed by the ease with which people claimed the blood washed out, and decided that a show with a white painted set, where the actress in the white cotton dress gets coated in blood was a good place to test that.

I ordered a gallon of the blood jam. The costume designer and I tested the blood on some scraps of fabric and were very impressed. On the first preview, when the actress walked out onto the stage, we were disappointed, the yellow light was reacting all wrong with the colors in the blood. As the director told me in notes, "I wasn't sure if she'd just murdered someone, or if a cat had peed on her." Not the reaction you want.

I called up Greg and asked him what I could do. The blood needed to be darker and more opaque. He immediately offered to make me a whole new gallon in a darker color to suit my needs, and offered some advice on adding a few drops of green food coloring to the batch we had, in order to adjust the color until a new batch could be created. The adjustments worked fantastically, and the new batch I received two days later looked even better.

Also to the delight of the costume and set designers, we have yet to see a stain on either the costume or the set after a full week of previews.

After working with the blood, and hearing from many others who knew Chris and Greg about how awesome they are, I wrote Greg to ask a few more questions. Here are the questions and his answers.

I heard from someone at Oak Park Festival that you taught yourself chemistry in order to figure out a way to make an edible, non staining blood. Can you tell me a little be more about how this came about? Where you went to for information? 

I still remembered the chemistry basics from high school and I looked up information needed to fill in gaps as I experimented. I had worked on a show where I claimed I could make a blood that was edible and washed out (before I created Blood Jam) and was extremely embarrassed/humbled when I realized how truly tough that is! I went through and played with every known recipe out there. It didn't make sense, however, that it couldn't be done. So I put together some ideas and would chase each one down to see what happened. It took a full year of non-stop failure till I finally, accidentally, created the recipe for Blood Jam. It was a process that built on the successes and failures of each previous experiment to capitalize on what worked/didn't work and why. The best way to learn the practical side of chemistry!!

I went all over for info. I asked people, searched the web, read blogs and interviews of other blood makers, looked at other blood products, and tracked down product info from companies to figure out the chemical pieces I needed. Some stuff was hard or impossible to find so I had to infer many pieces and extrapolate info from one area and trust it would hold true for what I was doing. Much of the chemistry came from trying to understand what I had created after the fact! The original hypothesis would work (or not) and I had I figure out why the result was doing or not doing certain things before moving on. Fun and frustrating at the same time!

How do you two know each other, and what gave you the idea to partner on this venture? 

We have been close friends for eight years. My wife met Chris first through theater friends. Our close circle is considered family, when I told them what I was working on, none were surprised id be tinkering with this sort of thing, and everyone wanted to help in some way (and everyone definitely has!) Chris was able to financially get the company started and his business sense is what keeps the company grounded. He likes to say he is the Gravity and I am the Momentum (our company is Gravity and Momentum LLC). Without his grounding I would have flown in too many directions after the next project interest and ran the company bankrupt real fast!

What's next? Any new products in the works?

The immediate goals for the blood is to continue to tweak the color so that its the perfect blend for thickness and for when it gets thinned out. We nailed the washing/edible obstacle but the color obstacle is still quite difficult to get. Small adjustments one way or the other can make the blood look too brown, purple or orange when thinned out. Ideally we get it to the sweet spot where it looks like a nice, real red when first deployed and settled to a realistic dried bloodbrown over time.

We are also continuing to tweak the powder so its able to be applied to the skin more easily and discreetly. The powder works wonderfully for caplets, and would be crazy cool as a water activated effect on skin!

I am also playing with Fire Gels and starting data research on the effect of performance on the actor and audience. (See why Chris is vital! All over the place!). This is on top of still teaching, doing stunts and choreo! Soo, it may be a while till we finish but we planning on being around for a bit.

Edible Thai Noodles

For Broken Fences at 16th Street, we needed a few take-out dishes of Thai food. For three of the four dishes used thin strips of torn muslin, added beads or torn up paper pieces of different colors, and tossed them with some glue and a couple drops of food coloring. 

One of the dishes, however, needed to be edible. The director suggested rice, but with no microwave or stove that is easy to access at this particular theatre, I knew it would have been too much work for the ASM to prep something the actor would feel okay about eating nightly. 

Instead I decided to make a noodle dish. 

 I bought lots of small corn tortillas (bonus- super inexpensive) and cut them into this strips. 

layered and piled into the tub they look pretty convincing. They looked even more convincing when the actor got a few on his fork to eat them. 

Quick appetizers

For Broken Fences at 16th Street Theatre, I needed a small tray of appetizers. They didn't need to be anything specific, no one ever interacted with them (aside from one character bringing them out and setting them on the table) and the audience never got a close look at them. 

I needed something quick, easy and most importantly, cheap. 

At the craft store I purchased one bag of beige Model Magic, and several small bags of pom-pom balls, for a total price of $7.

 I molded the model magic into log flat strips

 placed the pom-poms along the strips, 

 and then rolled them up. 

from a distance on the tray they worked perfectly. I think next time I will try with strips of felt for a slightly more uniform look. 

This is my job- fake crack pipes

We all know that Google keeps track of our searches in order to try to create a detailed profile of who we are, and what are preferences are. I often wonder what they must think of me (I also wonder if I am on any government watch lists based on some of the things I have researched). 

For this show, I needed crack pipes. A fairly easy search sent me to several websites detailing how they could be made. One sent me to ask for a "straight shooter" at a liquor store. It is apparently a narrow glass tube, that I guess is used to mix up some types of cocktails, the liquor store had no idea what I was talking about, and I felt very awkward trying to explain why I needed this thing even though I didn't know what it was used for. 

 Next I went to a smoke shop/head shop. I explained that I wanted a narrow glass tube that would be the type that crack smokers would use to turn into a crack pipe. 

The conversation involved lots of verbal gymnastics as the clerk at the store tried to help me while still saying over and over that he didn't know what I was talking about. "I would hope that no one would use anything I sell for such a thing. We only sell items intended for smoking LEGAL tobacco products. These small glass tubes over here look a bit like what you are describing, but see how they are meant to fit into this PERFECTLY LEGAL hookah?"

I filled the glass tubes with steel wool (the website I found suggested copper brillo pads that would turn a silver-grey color when heated) and used a lighter to burn the end of the tube. 

 It turned out pretty well (maybe a bit too much steel wool after looking for more 

research images). But totally believable in the moment. 

"Miracle" Set Dressing

Miracle on South Division Street, is set in a Buffalo, New York kitchen. The largest part of my job was set dressing. We needed this kitchen to feel lived in. Like it was a part of a home that these characters had lived in their whole lives.

There aren't a lot of specific projects to show you here, but I wanted to share the pictures with you. Partially to show the level of detail that should be considered to make set dressing feel real, and partially because I'm really proud of it and want to show it off. 

The majority of the food in the pantry was donated by members of the company. We placed boxes out in multiple locations for people to put things in, and my intern collected them daily and cleaned out things that needed to be cleaned.

 The sideboard was found on craigslist. It was filled with nice china from stock, the cookbooks were from the thrift store, and the strawberry jars were filled with real rice, sugar and flour. 

 The photo wall in the hallway was a combination of stock photos, images sent to us by the actors of them as children, and of their families, and pictures of the designers and their families to fill in the blanks.
We ended up needing to hang the photos three times. Once my assistant did it, but it looked pretty sloppy. Then I did it, and thought I was doing a much better job making the spacing even finally we did it together and created this arrangement. It turns out it was very important to continually have someone stepping back to look at the larger picture, which was impossible to do with one person, standing up close, holding the frames and screwing them in.

 I included this other shot of the same wall mostly just to show the little glade plug-in in the wall outlet.

 The photos on the outside of the fridge were also of the cast, designer, director and our families. Some of the magnets were purchased, some were found at thrift stores, and some were created by searching stock and craft bins and attaching anything small and interesting to a magnet with hot glue.

 Any cabinet that was opened during the action of the show had to be fully dressed. The audience saw very little of what was inside as the cabinet only opened for a moment, but it was important that the moment felt as natural as possible.

 The costume designer helped me pull a couple jackets and coats from stock that could have believably belonged to the characters.

 We added Buffalo Sabers and Bills "stickers" to the window on the back door.

 Most of the containers inside the fridge were also donated. The jam jars were just ball jars filled with scrap fabric and water. I also used casserole dishes and a bowl covered with tin foil to fill space.

 The butter in the previous image is just a slice of upholstery foam tucked into the butter dish

 My favorite pieces on this shelf are the recipe box and junk bowl (filled with keys, some buttons, a few screws and bolts, tic tacs and nail polish) on the top shelf

 Other than the herbs and the curtains in this photo, notice the windchime outside the window

 The cookie jar is part of a subtle strawberry theme in the kitchen. I find it helpful to pick a theme like this to help direct my set dressing purchases, and to give a set some personality.

 When set dressing, I think there should always be some pens (this time in a jar with the american flag), and a pad of paper or two by the phone.

Slice-able Cheese and Sausage

For Miracle on South Division Street, the characters were supposed to be preparing a small lunch of pepperoni and cheese, and fruit salad. The actors ended up eating parts of the fruit salad, which I will explain in another post, but the cheese and sausage just needed to be sliced up and look real.

To achieve this effect, without the giant cost of providing a new block of  cheese and a new pepperoni nightly, we used clay

. I purchased nice, plastalina modeling clay from Blick for the project. Plastilina brand plasticine is advertised as never drying out. I wanted to make sure that our clay was in no danger of drying out or getting crusty during a 40 performance run.
  I took two colors of yellow and two colors of brown.

I ripped the clay into small pieces and then pressed the pieces back together to get a mottled more natural color/texture

Of course, the packaging is what sells so many pieces of fake food.
We wrapped the clay in plastic wrap, and secured it with sticker labels that we printed to be used nightly. We had enough labels to use one per performance, so the actor did not have to worry about ripping them, and the stickers were able to hide and secure the loose ends of the plastic wrap, making the wrap look much more professional.

On stage, the actors were able to unwrap both pieces easily, place them on their respective trays, and slice into them with standard kitchen knives. 

After the show each night, the run crew can just press the clay back together and smooth out the seams before adding more plastic wrap and another sticker.