Children of Eden

[the_marching_penguin]

Ever since my high school director told me about this musical I was extremely excited for some reason. I hadn't heard in the music or anything but I just loved the idea I guess. He has finally decided to put it on, but now I am out of High School. He has asked me to come back and help him out though. A couple of my friends who he has also asked to help him out just got to thinking and we thought that we should make it a really amazing show that you wouldn't typically see in a high school. We are gonna pull out everything we can and make it amazing. I would like to use control booth as a resource and just ask for any ideas. I don't know if anyone has done this show or what but I would just like some ideas on how to make this a great show. Also when we think of ideas I'll probably need help on how to make them and such so I hope you can all be as much help as possible. thank you.

[ship]

Can you post what ideas concepts and problems you already have? Given most of us have not read the play, a general description of it much less your intent might foster more ideas into how to and what to verses in general what was done on our part.

[ecglstec]

Did the show a few years ago. Be glad to help you out as much as I can.

[the_marching_penguin]

This show won't be until November so I'm not sure on any details right now. The story is basically the Bible (old testament) Mainly Adam, Eve, The Creation, Noah and the ark, etc. One thing I would like as many ideas as possible is the forbidden tree and the fruit. The tree is destroyed and I also want the fruit to light up somehow. All general ideas are welcome. One other big problem is that there is a giant circle of stones. I'm thinking lots of wire and foam. Any ideas on this would also be great. I am designing the lighting for this play mainly, along with other things. I'm thinking lots of deep purples, and some greens. Any ideas on how to incorportate these would be helpful, again Thank you all.

[Toul]

This show has incredible sentimental value for me: it was really the first show I ever worked on. It has incredible music courtesy Stephen Schwartz. It's not a typical Broadway-style musical; the music is more electronic and in some ways crisper than an orchestra could yield. We had a full-out rock band in the pit, with three keyboards and two guitars.

The tree of knowledge is indeed an incredible part of the tech for this play. Ours was at the top of an upstage center platform 96" off the floor. Our initial plan for its destruction was to split down the middle and then swivel the halves down below sightlines. This worked perfectly exactly once. Eventually we scrapped that idea and just flew the whole tree as one piece. Essentially it sank into the ground when it was destroyed. No one was completely satisfied with that method.

For the tree's glowing fruit, we purchased our first Colorizer glass gobo. It was just a swirl of purples and pinks and reds and blues. We put it in a gobo spinner and slid the whole thing into a source four focused straight at the tree. Whenever the tree was highlighted, this spooky cue came up with everything a few levels dimmer and the tree brilliantly lit with this spinning hypnotic gobo. It was really quite awesome.

Our whole set suggested a mountain. We used chicken wire to mold rock forms to the 2x4 structure. To the chicken wire we sewed (I know, eeew) brown paper bags, and to the paper bags we pasted newsprint in a kind of papier-mache (sp?) deal. It ended up looking really good after we got it painted.

The ring of stones is a difficult situation. It's only in one brief scene of the play, and if you were to actually try to build all those rocks, it would take a long time. Our director chose to use his chorus as a ring of stones. They just stood very still, and I think the audience got the idea when the principals were like "look! a ring of giant stones!" It's an interesting issue, though, and I look forward to hearing how you deal with it.

The other major set challenge is the ark. This is the major place where our version differed from NCT's version. They flew in this giant ark that covered half the stage for the entire second act. We imagined ours. There was a little rolling, rougly ark-shaped 8" platform that we used for the action on the ark, and then the animals just sat all over the stage around it. It's hard to explain, really.

But I look forward to hearing how you do things. I get the feeling there are a lot of cool ways to do this show.

[CHScrew]

We did that a few years ago. Before my time. There was ALOT of light changes. Mainly because there were very few set changes. They had to set new submasters blind in the middle of the show because our board couldn't store them all. The show went great though. I don't remember it very well but I remember that I liked it.

For the tree, we made a wooden frame, covered it in chicken wire, and the plastered the outside. It was just the trunk and dome branches. For leaves, we made a curtain that looked like leaves that we just pulled infront of the tree. It looked great. We still have the tree in storage.