from Benno Nelson, Floor Manager
Spolier Alert! Special Effects in the theater always inspire the question: how did they do that? This is true onstage more than onscreen because onstage you know you’ve been tricked mechanically — no computer animation, no stunt doubles, the secret will be something simple. Performers whose onstage work is comprised solely of effects and tricks (magicians, for instance) have to relentlessly guard their secrets, but for our performance, in which the special effects are just dressing on top of a solid plot, characters, and theme, we don’t mind sharing how we make the surprises onstage. Since the crew has to start cleaning the stage right away, often we’re asked by audience members how we make the blood or how the bodies work, and generally we’re happy to explain.
After a few weeks of performance in this technical show, much of the crew’s job becomes upkeep of these illusions. Today, for instance, I had to come in to work early to repair one of the corpses, whose foot came off. Using a mixture of splints, silicone caulk, and hot glue I was able to re-attach it well enough that, hopefully, no one will notice. Additionally, the Assistant Stage Manager, Cori Kabat, has to spend a while every night cleaning all of the guns. This is quite a job: not only is there the usual powder debris, but our guns also get a healthy dousing of stage blood and stage shoe polish (corn syrup and chocolate frosting, respectively) and getting these sticky substances out take a lot of work.
The stakes are relatively low for my repair. If one of the corpses comes out without a foot, we can reasonably believe the foot has been taken off already. But if the guns aren’t just right, they might not go off, which leaves the actors in an odd position. The actor playing Padraic, Cliff Chamberlain, told us all a hilarious story of a play he was in, where his character got shot in one of the opening scenes. One night, the actress shooting him pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. Thinking quickly he just acted like the shock of that misfire gave him a heart attack so that he could die and the play could go on.
Luckily, we haven’t had to do any heart attacks yet. We’ll keep you posted.
