Weirdest Thing You've Been Asked To Complete

[MPowers]

Four foot high pile of crumpled newspapers and a phantom orchestra..... more later.

Well, I said "more later"..... Guess now is later. Dick Shawn Dick Shawn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia did, among other things an extremely successful, award winning, one man show "The Second Greatest Entertainer in the Whole Wide World". In his younger days he started the show buried in a pile of bricks fully visible to the audience from the moment the house opened. As he got a little older the weight of the bricks got to be too much so he changed it to a 4' high pile of crumpled news papers. Sounds easy but that's a LOT of papers, and of course they had to be dealt with every night, before during and after the show. Getting him settled and then getting the pile just right so he could breathe without moving the pile was tricky. Our real worry was "What if he fell asleep under there??". The second thing was a ghost orchestra for the same show. At one point during a dream sequence, a 10 piece ghost orchestra appears on stage. Now along with everything else, this is one week summer stock. Things have to happen fast and cheap. The orchestra was of course stuffed dummys. The heads were the white s tyro foam wig blocks with fake beards and wigs and hand painted faces. The torsos were panty hose stuffed with, you guessed it, more newspaper and then stuck upside down into a Tee shirt. The legs were again stuffed panty hose. A local Tux shop donated the tuxedos and white gloves (for hands) for advertising and a local high school band loaned the instruments. Add chairs and stools, a lot of bailing wire and a plywood pallet (no frame, little 1" casters, stuffed dummys don't weigh much!), dim light, haze and a little CO2 fog under the pallet, a black push/pull stick and Voila! A ghost orchestra floats on stage magically.

 

[zmb]

Latest and greatest: Helped build a two story load bearing set, completely out of honeycomb cardboard.

Pictures please

 

[gafftapegreenia]

Pictures please

We weren't allowed to take pics during construction, but here are two reviews with plenty of pictures.
The Lucky Penny crosses a new 'Threshold' with its latest production
BURNAWAY » Lucky Penny’s Threshold, a Balance of Control and Primal Forces

 

[hslighting]

I was asked to grab a saw and head into the woods next to my school to find a stump of exact dimensions by the Construction supervisor. An hour later, a mile and a half later, we gave up on finding a stump lying around of those measurements and cut down a sapling.

 

[willbb123]

Was asked to take a sword home and grind down the edge. Not too strange, except I had to walk past the police station on the way to the parking garage; got some strange looks.

 

[zmb]

Was asked to take a sword home and grind down the edge. Not too strange, except I had to walk past the police station on the way to the parking garage; got some strange looks.

I've had the director ask which sword I like better as he's about to order a prop/dull one online from a school computer first thing in the morning.

 

[Redkhur]

Hmm... weirdest thing I've been asked to complete

Well, we were doing "Little Shop of Horrors" and at the beginning of the production, I was told that twoey was taken care of.....then a week before the performance, I was told to make twoey with no budget.

But I pulled it off and got a lot of compliments on it.

 

[tyler.martin]

a couple of years ago we did a show where the leading man gets a cake thrown in his face. The crew decided to rotate who would bake the cakes. That actor held a competition where the best cake got some prize. I won second place with Guinness peanut butter cake. First Place was his favourite(pineapple upside down)

-or-

on a festival this past summer, a pop rock band brought a golf cart to the site, and I got the job of taking to the car wash.

 

[Theresa]

Here is a link to my blog post about renovating Milky White for Into the Woods

Milky White - Theresa Brandon

 

[Van]

Nicely done Theresa ! Very nicely done.

BTW Great Stuff does come in several flavors, " Minimal expanding" and "normal" being two of them. They also make a Latex based foam. I did not know, however, that they made one specifiaclly for pond liners.

 

[TOG]

Dye an English rock star's underwear purple and then hand wash it before each show. Make a marching bass drum look "African or something". Spend my days off while on tour rummaging through junk yards throughout North America for interesting bits of metal for him to bang on during the show...

 

[leastlikely]

I've had to be recorded singing for a show because it wasn't a musical and the cast didn't have a singing audition, and none of them could pull off the song the director wanted. I ASM'd a show where in addition to fight call we had a rappel call. Because there was actual rappelling in the play. On that same show I had to wash loads of dishes (let's see... 4 champagne flutes, 4 shot glasses, 2 brandy snifters, and a knife), set a new wedding cake each night (only the top layer was edible thank goodness!), one of my cues was "standby to receive bathtub," and there were a couple of times where I had to reattach a dummy's arm (because the arm wasn't actually supposed to fall off). And I had to pack up a bunch of wedding gifts each night, including normal things like a hand mixer and a curling iron (...is that a normal wedding gift?) and also moon boots. Oh, and this wasn't my task (thank goodness), but on a version of Christmas Carol that I ASM'd recently, we had this wonderful vendor stand filled with actual chestnuts... Our two prop designers spent a lot of time (and money! Chestnuts are not cheap!) on it. And then we learned that Scrooge was allergic to nuts, so they had to pull all the nuts that had been glued in, scrub the wooden cart, paint over it, and make the same nuts out of styrofoam.

 

[chausman]

I've had to be recorded singing for a show because it wasn't a musical and the cast didn't have a singing audition, and none of them could pull off the song the director wanted. I ASM'd a show where in addition to fight call we had a rappel call. Because there was actual rappelling in the play. On that same show I had to wash loads of dishes (let's see... 4 champagne flutes, 4 shot glasses, 2 brandy snifters, and a knife), set a new wedding cake each night (only the top layer was edible thank goodness!), one of my cues was "standby to receive bathtub," and there were a couple of times where I had to reattach a dummy's arm (because the arm wasn't actually supposed to fall off). And I had to pack up a bunch of wedding gifts each night, including normal things like a hand mixer and a curling iron (...is that a normal wedding gift?) and also moon boots. Oh, and this wasn't my task (thank goodness), but on a version of Christmas Carol that I ASM'd recently, we had this wonderful vendor stand filled with actual chestnuts... Our two prop designers spent a lot of time (and money! Chestnuts are not cheap!) on it. And then we learned that Scrooge was allergic to nuts, so they had to pull all the nuts that had been glued in, scrub the wooden cart, paint over it, and make the same nuts out of styrofoam.

What show was that?

 

[leastlikely]

What show was that?

Big Love by Charles Mee

 

[What Rigger?]

Director: "Oh, since you're on your way home...I need you to deliver this summons to this guy I'm suing. Here's his address. It'll be fine."

Me (hired as Stage Manager): "No."

Director: "I don't understand the problem..."

Me: "I quit."

 

[gafftaper]

Director: "Oh, since you're on your way home...I need you to deliver this summons to this guy I'm suing. Here's his address. It'll be fine."
Me (hired as Stage Manager): "No."
Director: "I don't understand the problem..."
Me: "I quit."

Oh Man! Now that's funny!

I made a tree stump painted safety orange and yellow for a production of "As you like it"... the director had an "interesting" vision for this production.

My favorite show is "The Man who came to Dinner" because I got to build a sarcophagus


and "Cockroach City"... "Inside there are 10,000 cockroaches and with any luck in a few months there will be 100,000!" It made odd sounds and you could hear something bumping around inside it and see movement behind that screen.

 

[What Rigger?]

Oh Man! Now that's funny!

I made a tree stump painted safety orange and yellow for a production of "As you like it"... the director had an "interesting" vision for this production.

My favorite show is "The Man who came to Dinner" because I got to build a sarcophagus
View attachment 8670

and "Cockroach City"... "Inside there are 10,000 cockroaches and with any luck in a few months there will be 100,000!" It made odd sounds and you could hear something bumping around inside it and see movement behind that screen.
View attachment 8669

Now THAT'S gross!

 

[agcraig]

Make a sculpture out of 4 giant trash bags of movie popcorn, chicken wire, hot glue, and paper mache.

 

[zmb]

"Cockroach City"... "Inside there are 10,000 cockroaches and with any luck in a few months there will be 100,000!" It made odd sounds and you could hear something bumping around inside it and see movement behind that screen.
View attachment 8669

Serious case of the heebie jeebies coming on and the audience just won't feel right for the rest of the night.

 

[shannonlusk81]

Repairing the fiberglass rump of a carousel horse used for a pole dance routine.

STILL trying to find a way to replicate an atom bomb mushroom cloud safely on a 20' by 25' stage.

"The relish on the 4 foot hotdog bun is looking dull, could we remake it with glitter this time?"

Aaaand once a week I clean excess blood and glitter off of a 10" hyper realistic penis prop that is used during a song called "Eating Penis doesn't Make you Gay" (a duet sung by a seasoned zombie to a new zombie).

I adore my job.