Wednesday 29 December 2010

Christmas with The Ash Girl

After four days of lazing around and eating too much it was good to have an excuse to do something different and helping build the set for The Ash Girl proved to be the perfect break from Christmas excesses.

The centre piece of the set is a 3-sided revolving structure - imagine a toblerone stood on its end. Each of the three sides represents a different setting and is turned round during scene changes. The bit I was set to work on is a huge tree that reaches almost to the lights and has branches that fold back on on themselves when the next setting is required.

The tree was made of hardboard, some bits of insulating foam were then stuck on to represent the knots and lumps and it was then covered in papier mache to give it some texture. My job was to cut out a slanting piece of hardboard with a jigsaw, screw on a bracket and hinge to the structure and then nail on my piece of hardboard. This took me most of the afternoon and was just so that the tree didn't look 'too straight'. It certainly gave me an awareness of how many hours of work go into constructing even the simplest of sets. (Not that this one is going to look simple!)

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Coming up...

The Ash Girl by Timberlake Wertenbaker 10th to 16th January 2011

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck Thursday 10th to Saturday 19th February 2011

Auditions for this years outdoor Shakespeare The Tempest, Sunday 20th and Tuesday 22nd February 2011.

Teechers by John Godber 14th to 19th March 2011

See Progress Theatre website for details of all our productions and auditions.

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