Goat-Cart

[Dreadpoet]

So we are doing Les Miz and there is a point where the male lead lifts a heavy object off of an innocent by standard, thereby restarting up a plotline. This heavy object most often is a heavy wagon...sometimes with a canon and such in the rear. The production I am designing for is in a space where that same wagon would look more like a cart pulled by a goat than a wagon pulled by Clydesdales, though I have seen plenty of productions go this route. My director has given me the option of selecting another less construction involved, more feasible, and greater verisimilitude heavy object for the actor to lift off of the other actor. I think the act of constructing something as involved as a large wagon for the sake of one 10 second scene is ridiculous at my level anyway. I know that many of you have done this show before, so you might come up with what a good alternative might be for a small facility smallish budget production. Thoughts?

 

[MarshallPope]

It's been a while since I've seen the show, but would a simple wooden beam work?

 

[jwolfkill]

I like MarshallPope's idea of just making it a simple wooden beam or log. IIRC, this scene occurs when Jean Valjean is mayor of Montreuil-Sur-Mer, which is a coastal town on the English Channel, so a length of Sonotube dressed up to be part of a timber mast for a ship (wrap some rope around it, etc.) would be plausible. It could even add a nice thematic element since Jean Valjean was imprisoned at Toulon, where convicts were held on prison ships - a timber mast harkens to his past and seems to be a fitting device for exposing it.

 

[kicknargel]

I worked on an equity summer stock production that first had Valjean break his handcuffs when he got paroled, then break handcuffs off Fantine when they're trying to take her to jail. They had to cut some lines, but it worked overall.

 

[Les]

I like the timber (or similar) idea also. The cart is pretty hard to do without making it look cheesey. For smaller productions it essentially has to be a large wheel barrow and it is hard to convey the imagery of something that small being so heavy. It is also hard to stage a "runaway cart" since you have to suggest speed, distance, and chaos. Seems like you end up just having people run in circles. I did the show about ten years ago and that was my least favorite scene because it broke my suspension of disbelief every time.

 

[Dreadpoet]

Thank you for your suggestions. I will be creating a ship mast out of sono-tube as suggested and we have some of the necessary accoutrement in our storage. We will be staging the falling of the mast upstage where the actor will be revealed to have the mast on him rather than the action being a vista.