Baby Bear Chair

Dustincoc

Active Member
Anyone have any ideas how I can make a baby bear chair that can be reset during the show for another preformance immediately after? This has go me stumped, I am the co-set designer, Master Carpenter, Lighting designer, and Lighting Tech. I just got a rough draft of the script last Wednseday. First rehearsal is this coming Thursday(and the main load-in). We open on the 27th.
 
I've got an idea, let me stew on it for a bit and then I'll post it.
 
We just did The Trial of Goldilocks and we had a chair like that. It was basically a four-legged stool. I can see if I can get the design for it, or at least a rough outline. I think there was a break in one of the legs, and it was held up with a rope that the actress would pull to relieve the tension and then the leg would break. Mostly, I think she just balanced on the chair for the ten seconds she was on it, then tipped it over when the chair was supposed to break. It was a 45 min show and we had a show every 1 1/2 hours, and I believe it only took a minute to put back together. It was a poor excuse for a set piece, though, so I don't know if you'd want to do that.
 
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you could have the legs attached with pins instead of screws. If all the pins are aligned in a certain direction, a simple twist of the actress' body can torque the legs free...but I'm not sure how it would look aesthetically. maybe the back of the chair is held upright by tying it to the chair arms with a 20 pound test fishing line that breaks when she puts her weight into it. Maybe you could modify a director's chair... the fabric back keeps the arms of the chair rigid. if the fabric can be released some way, the arms fly down because the tension is gone, then you'd have to rig the legs to fail someway... maybe the seat of the chair sits on the legs without actually being attached.
 
Seems like there are lots of options with loose pin hinges and a small piece of wire. You could have the back fall off, arms fall off, legs collapse... depends on the chair you want to break.
 
I’ll toss this idea out:

Take an old wooden chair with wood joints and no metal reinforcements. (I’m thinking about an institutional-type dining room chair where the legs are connected to the bottom of the seat with round mortise and tenon joints, and the joints of the rest of the chair are similar round mortise and tenon joints.) Take it apart at the joints. Now cut the tenons way down, maybe to a quarter or half inch, and then sand the edges of the tenons so they are rounded, but with a little of the shaft of the tenon intact. Now the chair should be easy to re-assemble. Maybe a little pine tar or something similar is needed to keep it together. The chair should have some stability, but should collapse when sat upon.


Joe
 
The chair should have some stability, but should collapse when sat upon.
Joe

Does baby bear need to sit in it? I'm not familiar with the show, but in the story he sits in it
 

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