As a family, we were super involved in this NYT show. Both Davison and Brock were in the show. Lori was front-of-house manager, and I plugged along with Sets (actually had some fun with my partner-in-crime ER Ashford on some projects). And now we get to talk about Mikaela’s art. I asked Mikaela to create a series of “travel posters” for the lobby. Additionally, she also created a digital version of a car and banner that were used for the photo booth.
Travel Posters:
Mikaela also created a “weathered” version of the Fly VulgAir poster that we attached to the end of the toymaker’s workbench.
There were two versions of this poster, one with the “All children are prohibited”, the other without that particular tagline.
This was the car painting (along with a banner) that was attached to a cloudy background and available for a picture background. It was printed on canvas, so was sturdy enough for the purpose.
On to a couple of the sets projects
ER Ashford and I volunteered to build the broken down car for the show. There was an actual Chitty car (built on a golf cart chassis) that was one of the highlights of the sow, but we put our heart and soul into this one. ER had the headlight rigged so they sort of shone, then flickered and went out. There was also a mechanism (controlled by a small cast member in the car) for steam – being an air puff of baby powder that came out of the tube at the top of the radiator.
This isn’t an ideal picture, but it shows part of the Act 2 version of the car. During the intermission, we swapped out the front wheels, added a hood ornament and windshield, and a new hood. The car then was the Baron’s car – and a key prop for “The Roses of Success” song being performed here.
This was another Sets project – the Candy machine. It had a couple of moving parts – a conveyor belt that dispensed candy, and some whirling gears and candy. These were controlled by the two large levers shown. This item was a lot of fun (i.e. “how about this idea”?, which led to a lot of work) and was fun to see on stage (where it looked a lot smaller than it did in my garage).
Here’s a view of the other side of the candy machine – not quite finished but most of the elements including the 3D printed conveyor belt, squarish boiler (just the wrong shape according to my engineer co-worke ER, “no-one would design a boiler like this”), strange “mechanism” meant to look like something hanging down from the top, the mechanism for the turning gears.
