Little Shop of Horrors Audrey II

[shakenblaken]

Next summer my theater is doing Little Shop of Horrors, and it is an outdoor theater, and we are building all four plants, does anyone have any suggestions about what material we should use to build all of the puppets to keep the plant from not being so heavy so the puppeteer will not sweat that much inside of it? Also does anyone have any plans or detailed drawings on how to build the puppets?

[mozsey]

How big of a plant are we talking? I just saw a local high school show where they had more than one puppeteer, and one person as the main plant.

[shakenblaken]

We will have one person in the plant throughout the show

[gafftaper]

The Audrey II we used was made of foam rubber and HORRIBLE for the actor. Unfortunately, you need fairly heavy material to get the right look in the front. If I was designing it I would think about using lycra or some other really thin light weight material around the back half of the costume to allow it to breathe. Another option to look at would be to build a fan system into the costume.

[silicsound]

Another option to look at would be to build a fan system into the costume.

I've used a microclimate cooling vest for actors in bulky costumes. They're normally used by the army for tank drivers, but they're cheap and they keep the actors cool. I find the best way of supplying air to them is using a small silent vacuum motor.
If you got lots of money you can go for the fancy liquid cooled ones.

[Phantom2014]

I just got done building an Audrey two. We eliminated the 3rd plant, using the same big one for both acts. We did not use the original broadway design, we created our own. This one had a metal pole on the center and on the right side we had the plant operator and on the left side, we had a slide and the second puppeteer who sat inside the plant, waiting to pull the victims through. This plant head had a pipe frame with chicken wire giving its shape and giving the upholstery foam something o be attached to.

[shakenblaken]

Has anyone designed the massive 4th plant for Audrey 2 from Little Shop of Horrors? I need to get drawings so I can send to my producer because we are doing the show next summer and needs design for the plants

[JChenault]

In terms of how to build the thing - I have seen far too many folks build it out of foam rubber. While this seams like is should be light weight - it usually ends up being more than a little heavy. They try to build up the nose, etc sections using solid foam, put muslin and glue to make it smooth, When I first say Little Shop off broadway, the plant was amazing. The puppeteer was literally able to stand up and dance inside of the puppet.

I believe the way they did this was by using more or less standard puppet construction. I have seen the following methodology used on large 'You wear um' puppets although not on Audry.

First thing you do is to build the form using something like rattan. IE you build hoops of rattan and glue or tie them. Then you run some kind of jute webbing from the top to the bottom to align all of the hoops to give you the basic shape you need or want. For parts of the puppet like the head that need to be stiff, you will use more rattan for ribs between the hoops. The idea here is to keep it light weight. You may find other materials than rattan ( I have heard of plastic tubing, etc) but most of the successful builds I have seen used something like rattan ( IE a natural wood product ) instead of plastic or wire. For a christmas tree I once wore, we had hoops about every foot or so.

If you can't get the shape you want with the rattan ( say around an eye or nose ) you can add something like Ethafoam rods to the rattan frame to get your shape. Don't think you can short cut the time working on the rattan frame because you can 'Fix it with Ethfoam' later - the final product will be heavier and you will not like the results.

Once you have the shape set, you simply cover it with cloth. You could use a very thin foam here - but using cloth will save weight and make it more flexible and easier to move. ( But of course your design wall want to support the look of cloth). A popular choice for cloth is something with a bit of heft like felt.

Finish the project with appropriate paint and trim pieces.

The effect you want from the inside is the operator inside of a pretty wide open cage that is covered with the cloth.

I believe that in the old Little Shop scripts they had some pictures of how the puppet was built for the off broadway show. You might want to take a look.


Do your build early. Unless you have built these kinds of things, you will have issues. Your operator needs as much time as he can get inside of the thing.

[milan]

Good luck on the show! We did this at the Univ of OK when I was an undergrad. We had a sock puppet in a rigged plastic pot for the first Audrey II. As it grows we added one to a coat with a fake arm for a larger Audrey II. The third form was a pvc frame with fabric, and layers of foam. The actor could sit inside on a stool and ran the upper mouth with one pvc bar and another for the lower jaw. The 4th was a larger version of this and we had to rig a harness for the actor to wear the lower jaw. The upper jaw was so large the actor manipulated it with his upper body. I still can't believe he made a convincing plant! I wonder if you could rig a hidden fan under Audrey at the right moment? Maybe you could create vent holes that are covered by scrim? I know they have cameleon scrim that could be painted completely but let some air through. Even regular scrim could be great in the right places to allow top to bottom and left to right air flow. -I know we'd all love to see what you come up with.