Weirdest Piece You've Ever Built

Midsummer Nights Dream. Lort B production at the Walnut in Philly, 1983 (ish). Puck and two faries were very accomplished gymnasts. Item 1 was a foam rubber toad 9' long, 5'wide and 42" tall with a mini trampoline built into the back. The second was a 12' diameter Daisy blossom with the center another mini tramp. They were placed on stage so Puck and the fairies could jump from various platforms (tree stumps and logs etc) land on the toad or flower and go bounding 10' - 15' across the stage. Puck had one exit where he lept from the stump to the flower to the toad and off to a big soft landing mat/pit in the wings. The "skin " of the toad and daisy center were lycra and rubber cemented to the tramp tops. The lycra skin stretched with the tramp and hid the frames. The rubber cement prevent the lycra from sliping or sliding on the tramp surface as the performers landed and vaulted.

Michael Powers, Project Manager, ETCP Certified Rigger-Theatre
Central Lighting & Equipment, Des Moines, Ia. Central Lighting & Equipment
 
a rotating house, a fire breathing dragon, um... a mouse maze, a moving rock, and actually the weirdest thing i've had to make, was a shock wall (basically an electrified chain link fence with a chainsaw to make the "sparks", they were real sparks but very harmless)
 
The children's theater here is one of largest in the US (two theaters running 9 shows in a season with 10-15 performances a week). I was on a tour a few years back when I found what may be the greatest job in the world. The costume prop creator for a children's theater. Think about all the crazy gadgets and devices that are built into costumes in children's shows. It would be SUCH a wild job. Every season would be one weird piece after another.

I had an internship there this summer, and let me tell you, there was some bizarre times had. Just in general, it was probably the most fun I've had overall during summer.
 
We have to get around to building/modifying a dragon at my school for The Hobbit which rehearses in less than one week.
 
We recently closed "The Producers" and let me tell you about strange. Several Hitler costumes, more spandex than was probably necessary, and then there is the scenery...

We not only had a 1400 pound brick wall (flown on a pipe with a max weight of 1800 pounds), but a 12' high, two-circuit, glittery swastika. It was a strange show to be on flies for. The stack for the brick wall was 8' high (8" arbor spacing), and did not like to stop on cue. We managed to pull the rail out of the deck when it was struck (we have to use a winch as we don't have a loading rail, the winch was tied to the rail as per instructions), that might need an engineer to fix...
 
A couple more over the years.

An inflatable touring set for Jack and the Beanstalk, including an inflatable Cow, Castle, Beanstalk and Jack's house. All inflated with HPHV fans. The beanstalk and the castle grew (inflated) in front of the audience.

A Chair-in-a-box. Another touring show, gimick is the cast is a group of itenerent players who wander on to the stage and create the show from the "found" things and props scatered about the stage. A wooden crate about 24" on all sides opens up and unfolds, and unforlds and unfolds to become a padded upolstered wing back chair. Won a USITT Tech Expo Award in '93 for that one.

Michael Powers, Project Manager, ETCP Certified Rigger-Theatre
Central Lighting & Equipment, Des Moines, Iowa, Central Lighting & Equipment
 
I think for me, in props the cigar goes to a 30' tall carved EPS statue of Marylin Monroe, in the nude, with confetti cannons in her tits; she was built for the climax of The Trojan Women and before we got the settings on the air compressors just right, we were hitting the booth with confetti from the back of the stage - the director loved it, but the TD convinced him to tone it down because we would have had to vaccum the entire house every night, instead of just sweeping the orchestra pit. Even after we got the settings right, the corks from the nipples (they held the confetti in) still flew off into the house.

In costumes, I'm going to go with a frog costume for a dancer that had to turn inside-out from the mouth with the dancer still in it, and become a rat. That was a whole mess of foam-rubber and spandex, right there. It was for an original interpretation of Kiss of the Spider Woman. Running close second to this were sheep-suits that had to be made on a budget of about $5 for three trampolinists during a largely improvised dream sequence; we ended up hot-gluing cottonballs to long underwear, with the excellent but unintended side effect that when they went flipping around across the stage, they lost wool onto the actor below who was meant to be hallucinating them.
 
The weirdest so far is the ugly baby doll. She has warts, one dilated blind eye, the other eyelid droops. She wears pea green p.j.s and has a pet snake. She has a bad temper and she bites, though she has mellowed some since we started giving her cigarettes.

Ugly Baby started her existance as a mechanised doll that ate fake baby food and pooped (eeeew!). Her face was made of rubbery stuff, so it could mimic baby chewing motions. The skin could be peeled off the mechanical head. I had fun playing jr. plastic surgeon, though it was surprisingly difficult to achieve true repulsive ugliness on a baby. The phrase "she's so ugly she's cute" became very annoying during this time...

I knew Ugly Baby had finally reached her potential when my co-workers would turn their face away after looking at her. (but they usually came back for a second look, same reaction :lol:) Ugly Baby works for a local Haunt.
 
My mother does costumes for amateur theatre (Gang Show, for ex-Scout people) and recalls with horror a set of possum costumes they had to make a few years back. 60-70 kids = over 100 yards of very heavy, cheap fake fur. The costumes department actually burnt out several sewing machines, broke more needles than they cared to count and claim that that one set of costumes took more effort than 400 first act costumes combined (it's a huge show, if you can't tell).

Perhaps not weird, but very aggravating for the poor costumes department...

PS: Will find a photo when I get a chance - they didn't look too shabby!
 
- they didn't look too shabby!

More shaggy I would assume!

The costume shop in CYT Spokane has made a few odd things, from a carpet for Aladdin to not one, but two clocks and a wardrobe for Beauty and the Beast to a caterpillar for Alice in Wonderland.


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Mid Summer Night's Dream, Walnut Theatre Philie, 1983. Two cheer leading mini tramps built into scenic units for puck and the fairies to make huge leaps across the stage. One was built into a 10' long foam (upholstery foam, not the rigid stuff) sculpture that was a crouching toad and the mini tramp was in the center of the back. The other was the 3' diameter center of a giant daisy flower. The petals were about 6' long so the flower diameter was about 15'. they were set up with other solid levels and such that one could jump off a level land on the tamp and really fly, or from the floor to a tramp an up to the platform level. Puck actually had a single sequence where he went from platform to frog to flower to an off stage air bag landing pit. The performer playing Puck had a back ground as an Olympic gymnast. Today he probably would have gone to Circ. All the fairies that used the tramps also had some degree of circus or gymnast training. Oh, and they all got an extra chunk in their pay checks. I don't know if it was "hazard Pay" or some other designation, but there was a reward for the danger.
 
maybe not the weirdest but it was quite a job for us. We built a tallship for an opera. I think it was around 25 feet long, and the mast was about 40 feet high, curved bow and everything on top of truss.

Other than that I guess would be a near replica of Pablo Neruda's House in Chile along with his bell tower and stone arches from his courtyard. Also got to chop the bed of an old Ford pickup to make Mother Courage's cart, that's definitely the biggest thing I've ever cut in half.
 
maybe not the weirdest but it was quite a job for us. We built a tallship for an opera. I think it was around 25 feet long, and the mast was about 40 feet high, curved bow and everything on top of truss.

Other than that I guess would be a near replica of Pablo Neruda's House in Chile along with his bell tower and stone arches from his courtyard. Also got to chop the bed of an old Ford pickup to make Mother Courage's cart, that's definitely the biggest thing I've ever cut in half.

You know this is the costumes forum right? ;)
 
You know this is the costumes forum right? ;)

ha! who says those weren't costumes?! I didn't happen to check the forum while looking at the new posts haha. In that case the best I've got is a shredded, stabbed and bloodied suit jacket with tire tracks across the back of it. It's surprisingly easy to just spray black paint onto the tread of a tire and back over a jacket a few times.
 
Slightly off thread but not much. A costume designer friend of ours, my wife worked as his assistant off and on, threw a party every year..... near valentines on a date that hit the most dark nights of the local theatre community in one shot. It was called the "Red Dress Party". To attend on had to wear a ..... Red Dress....! Or some iteration there of. The party was a real hoot. Prizes for King and Queen of the Ball, (Queen was stacked, the host always won), most kissable lips (every one blotted on a post it note with a number and votes were taken, Most opposite your every day persona, best use of Pink. Luckily I was married to my own private costume designer and won best use of pink three years in a row. One year I went in a 50's knee length cocktail dress with combat boots, a weeks beard and a cigar stub. Tattoos down my arm with the names crossed out til the last; Maria, Mame, Dolly, Charity, Next! Next year a pink Knee length prom dress with a red wig and (have you ever tried to find heels in a mans size 6 1/2 5E?????).
 
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