The sets for three plays that summer each offered their
own interesting challenges that made the hard work enjoyable.
The last play required a few unique elements, three life-size
statues.
With the Greek Theatre theme to the play the statues
would be white but in contemporary poses.
It was decided to use plaster bandage wraps used for
broken bone casts and cast whole people.
Even back in 1994 plaster casts were becoming less
common place but we found a supplier in Hartford.
I let my assistant Rich take the lead on the casting
process in which he did a great job.
Who to cast?
Well it is time for a side story.
The Westminster
School where the Theatre Festival
was held was a boarding school for rich kids from all over the world.
Some teenage boy was traveling across America that
summer and was looking for interesting places to go.
Somebody who knew somebody suggested he make a stop
in Simsbury.
The only thing going on at the school in the summer
was soccer camps and the Theatre Festival
so he came to hang out with us for week or so.
So this boy who nobody knew hung out with us in the
scene shop just as we were about to do the body casting so he became our first victim,
I mean model.
So on a hot summer day dressed in shorts; wearing a
black garbage bag and covered with Vaseline
we began to cover him in plaster.
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| Ken, British Teen and Rich |
We learned a few things on the first attempt.
First we tried to cast too much of the body at once
and also plaster gives off a lot of heat as it sets.
Look up exothermic reaction online for hours of fun scientific
facts to read and enjoy.
For the next two bodies we did only parts of each
body and then joined them together after they were set.
We cast Ken, the other shop assistant, and even Ellen,
the scene designer, let us cast her.
You can see two of the body casts in the photos I
have posted but Ellen’s body double was sitting just out of the camera’s range.
We did not work all the time that summer and did
have some time for fun.
I brought my bicycle and we all rode it around the
campus and to town from time to time, plus we played some tennis, badly, and used to school pool a few
times.
The company had a good chef on staff and fed us three
meals a day.
The chef was cool guy who let us know where the key
to the freezer was so we had a few midnight ice cream raids.
Early on I remember going into town to check out one
of the bars.
It was a typical bar with several T.V.s on each one
with something different.
There were baseball games on a few T.Vs but one had
a news channel on that was showing an aerial shot of a slow moving SUV.
Of course that was the infamous O.J. slow chase in
the white Ford Bronco.
Someone recommended we check out the view from Heublein Tower on Talcott Mountain.
We stopped by and took the very steep path mile or
so up to near the tower.
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| Cliff by Heublein Tower |
I was amazed that people were riding mountain bikes
on the path and even more shocked that several people were carrying what looked
like large beach umbrellas.
When we got to the top the view was great and the umbrellas
turned out to be hang gliders.
It is a very steep cliff edge and those who jump
have no room for error.
You can see a video of people flying from that spot
at the following link:
I had a great time that summer and only had one
problem that I tried not let bother me.
More next time . . . . .
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