Design "The Rabbit Hole"

[tyler.martin]

I'm LD for a small(er) theatre, and my client is mounting "The Rabbit Hole" By David Lindsay-Abaire. The Director wants to have the audience tumbling down the rabbit hole at the end of the show. I am really kinda stuck on this... My thoughts were to Blackout the Auditorium and use 4 Mac 250's with a combo of a star, and dot breakup, and a mirror ball.

I tried it out, and it looks really hokey...

Does anybody have any suggestions? If you haven't read the show, it is about a family that looses their only child in a car accident, and how they deal with his death, and forgiving the 17 year old kid who hit him. The rabbit hole has two meanings, one being the deep black hole the parents are emotionally in, and a scifi ish story that is written by the 17 year old kid.

Thanks!

 

[shiben]

just a thought, but maybe try like 8 MLs all focused up at the ceiling, then drop them with spinning gobos through haze to the floor? pan them a bit while they drop? combine with a suitable projection? not sure what your budget/inventory looks like... possibly utilize some sort of blinder effect from US/C? Right Arms and S4s would probably work too... i would think in terms of using the depth of the space as the hole, and try and use MLs to set moving reference points, to give a feeling of motion. Good luck!

 

[tyler.martin]

Thanks for the input. I have next to no budget (like a couple hundred bucks) and no ML inventory. The 4 Macs I do have are on loan. I do have a fogger, mirror ball and strobe lite.

The show will be performed in 2 venues, a small 76 seat studio space, and then a 500 seat procenium venue. I have done design in both venues before, and I have a good handle on the design for the show, just having issues wit this rabbit hole.

My other idea was to haze up the room and see it i can get a gobo cut that is a bit off side, and then rotate it from ceiling down to the floor, to get a bit of tumble on it. Add some starry wash, and some colors, to round it all out...

 

[JChenault]

Many years ago I was at a worlds fair, and one of the rides had a sensation of binding speed. This was achieved by projecting moving images on the wall around the tram we were riding in that were moving quickly past us.

You might want to try to represent the sides of the hole rushing past the audience with your equipment. Not sure how to accomplish this, but it might be a visual approach to consider.

 

[shiben]

Yeah JC, I think that is kind of what I was envisioning, if not saying correctly. It might look silly, but you can also try making a chase with S4s along the sides of the space too.

 

[Van]

I have nothing to constructively contribute to this particular discussion, but having done this show, two years ago, I have to ask... is the Director a student ? Just an odd artistic choice......

 

[SHARYNF]

Borrowing some projectors and using them to create the effect is going to be the most realistic if that is the look you are wanting. it is hard with just standard gobo and standard rotators to get the effect. If you use a mirror ball, again to get picky you almost need to have two of them each rotation in the opposite direction and then lit from the side so that as it turns you will get reflected back on the wall a mirror pattern that flows from stage to rear giving you the effect. that is probably the cheapest solution that I can think of

Sharyn

 

[Syphilis]

Bottom lighting. Lots of bottom lighting under the seats would be my advice. If you have no budget LEDs are out, but if you've got some scoops or some ridiculously wide flood brights you could fill up the space with haze, and then blast some kind of a deeply saturated gel (R39 would probably do the job) from underneath. A rotating gobo effect on top of this would probably work nicely.