Defending yourself is a big piece of the puzzle. I had parents,
AHJ, building and grounds staff, the electrician, and a ton of other people telling me I was crazy when I did Metamorphoses. Even if I got the pool to hold water,
surely the porthole windows would leak. The rule from
AHJ was splashing was okay, but if anything
leaked, they'd have to pull the
plug -- literally.
The more I had people tell me I was crazy, the more I wanted to prove them wrong. Everything said and done, it was one of the most successful shows the school has ever done, and community members said that in the last 15 years they'd not seen a more interesting production from the high school.
While a lot of schools get by using cold
fog for the
effect, there's something to be said about that bone chilling final scene where Midas runs into the water with the golden jump rope his daughter was using when she was turned to gold, splashes around engulfed in darkness, and then his daughter appears on the shoreline, at which
point he climbs out of the pool, hugs her and begins to cry tears of joy as the lights go dark.
We actually trained Narcissus to stare into the water at his
reflection for the entirety of the
intermission, nearly half an hour on some nights before we got Act II rolling.
Another priceless moment was
Apollo's sun Phaeton running into the
theatre to the tune of Violent Femmes'
Blister in the Sun, and after he ran past the front row of the audience, giving everyone high fives, he hopped into the pool and jumped on his inflatable dolphin. The audience
loved it, and didn't even really mind getting splashed here and there.
There's an elegance to real water that you can't find in other effects. There's also a lot more hassle, but I know after the director and I got everything to work with water, we never would've had it any either way.
I've got photos of the set
here and
here that you might find interesting. Go to the second link if you want to see the pool before we filled it with water.
As a designer, I went into that show wanting to avoid water so I was pushing initially to use cold
fog, but we decided water was more genuine and gave us more the
effect we wanted. I know now having done it with water that I don't think I could ever, in good faith, design Metamorphoses
without real water -- the
effect just isn't the same.