Above: The completed Seussical Jr. set. Scroll down to see the design process of individual set pieces and props.
LEFT: First rough top down sketch of stage. MIDDLE: Rough "front" view of stage. RIGHT: Fist sketch of jungle / nest unit.
Beginning construction on platforms, giving them legs, and laying them out (also beginning work on benches).
I begin framing the circle platform with seam where two pieces of plywood meet. Afterwards, I put legs on the platform, so that it is taller than our existing platforms, while also overlapping them.
Full process of making the tub. Starting with a rough sketch + frame, then transferring that to lauan, building the frame, and painting. If I had time, I would have liked to redo the lauan facing so the outline looked better, but overall I still think it turned out pretty well.
Full process of creating our jungle / nest rotating unit. To avoid having the nest be its own individual rolling unit, this was created so that it could stay on stage throughout the entire show. The unit spins 180 degrees. On one side, it is painted to blend in with our truffula trees and foliage, what we referred to as the "jungle," or our neutral setting. When spun around, it reveals the nest. There are deadbolts on each side of the unit that lock down into holes that are drilled into the platforms, to hold the unit in place. After lots of practice, the students responsible for spinning the unit were able to do so successfully every time, in just around 10 seconds (the unit spins while actors are performing, but not on top of it).
LEFT: The jungle, or "neutral" side of the unit, with ladder. MIDDLE: The jungle side, with a sign that is placed on it during our carnival scenes. RIGHT: The nest side of the unit.
Full process of creating our piano unit, from first sketch to final product. The entire unit is one piece, on wheels. The actor is sitting on the unit as it rolls on stage, where it is parked, and the musical number plays out, while another actor sits on the side of the piano. Afterwards, it is rolled across and exits on the opposite side. For a long time, this unit was entirely red, and I wasn't really sure what to do with it. In the final days before our opening night, I finally figured out what I wanted to decorate it with. I think it turned out great! We will likely be reusing this piano frame for other shows in the future, albeit with a new paint job.
Full process of creating our beezle-nut oil kettle. This one was pretty simple. If I had more time, I would have made some tweaks. The idea was that the kettle is suspended over a "fire," held up by truffula tree sticks that the jungle citizens found lying around. I wanted the top stick to actually be laying across the two vertical sticks, as pictured in the sketch, but for some reason, Home Depot had Y shaped PVC connectors in every size except for the size we wanted to use for our "sticks."
Full process of creating our moveable truffula tree trunks. In my initial first sketch of the stage, I drew one of these as a sort of last minute thought, and we ended up creating four of them that the actors used quite frequently throughout the show to sit down during many scenes. Each trunk is a different height, but all of them were between 1'. and 1.5' tall. I really wasn't sure how to face these things, until I asked my stagecraft teacher from West Chester how he would do it, and he mentioned using fabric. Such a simple solution to a simple problem that took me longer than it should have to solve...
General progress pictures. Initially, there wasn't going to be a blue background, simply because I hadn't thought of it, until one of my students mentioned that it would look nicer. He was right! Facing the curved platforms in the front was really a struggle, and I ended up using tape to hide some of the uglier seams, which actually worked pretty well once painted over and looking at it from far away in the audience. It wasn't until much much later that somebody mentioned the product we should have been looking for the whole time was called "wacky wood," or simply bendable lauan. If only we had known earlier.
Some of the process of creating our many many truffula trees. The trees were traced onto 4'x8' foam sheets, and cut out using a cordless jigsaw. They were too flimsy to stand on their own, so they are actually tied to the fly bar using 100 pound fishing line (overkill), and then drilled into the floor for good measure, so there wouldn't be any visible legs holding them up. As you can see in the middle picture, my initial design for the trees wasn't that great. Up close, they looked sort of fine, but from far away, you couldn't see the spikes at all, and it basically just looked like a circle. Up until about a week before the show opened, this is what they looked like, until I had a crisis one night, decided I hated them, and spent the entire next day recutting every single tree to the appearance they adopt in the final picture (which was an excruciating but extremely worthwhile process). Adding the black outlines to them (and everything else on the set) really made them pop and look straight from a picture book.
This video is a demonstration of my concept for a driveable Pillberry bush. I tore an RC car down to its essentials, and used wood and hot glue to mount the bush to the car frame. The idea was that the Pillberry bush would drive itself onstage when called to appear in the play, in whimsical Seussian fashion. Unfortunately, it was too slow, and didn't quite fit the queuing that the kids had already rehearsed for weeks, so this ended up getting cut.
The completed desk. Unfortunately, I made this quickly one night in about an hour, and didn't snap any progress pictures. On the front are actual drawings from the actors during the course of the show. Jojo sits at this desk with a notebook and crayon and doodles throughout the show, an alternative to the bed which he would have slept in. These drawings were then used as decoration. The desk is an old school desk, with all the hardware removed to lighten it up, and faced with lauan. The desk stays on for all of Act 1 and is removed during intermission leading into Act 2.
Demonstration of our removable clover field. From the start of the production, this was the hardest problem to solve. Initial plans included having the clovers planted onto separate sheets of fabric which would be dragged onto stage from each wing, and meet in the middle. Alternatively, we thought we could have the field roll out on tiny inch tall platforms. The pictured idea came to me when we decided we were okay with painting the stage. If the stage was green, then, realistically, if our clover field was a series of green discs which could be removed and dropped into place easily, they would blend into the floor from the audience perspective. This is the solution we ended up going with. Scroll down to see results.
PHOTO CREDIT: Carly Petitdemange @cpetitdemange
These photos have been cropped for the privacy of the actors, and are not representative of the full photos taken by our excellent photographer. On the left, you can see the clover field discs across the stage. In total, we have 16 discs, and about 120 clovers (assembled from pom poms and paper straws). 13 discs had clovers which were glued in place. 3 discs, however, were marked with orange tape, and in these discs, the clovers were inserted gently. That way, Horton could pick the clovers from the discs in various locations, giving the illusion that every clover in the field could be removed and carried.
