From: sears@cello.hpl.hp.com (Bart Sears)
Newsgroups: alt.stagecraft,rec.arts.theatre
Subject: Re: Need help with "Into the Woods"
Date: 25 Jan 93 23:30:42 GMT
Followup-To: rec.arts.theatre
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories

In article <43984@sdcc12.ucsd.edu> cbirn@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (***Romulus*** ) writes:
>I am stage managing "Into the Woods" this spring and was wondering
>if anyone who had done the show could give me a couple of tips.  
>Some of the tech is kind of tricky and I still need to figure out 
>how to do it:
>
>- How did you (who did the show before) make the witch levitate in
>  first act?
>- How did you make the witch transform from an ugly witch into a 
>  beautiful woman?
>
>Also... I am trying to find out if it is feasible to make the trees
>out of spray foam.  ***Does anyone know how much that would cost, or
>where one could get spray foam?
>
>I appreciate any input.  If you have any other tips, please feel
>free to give them to me too.  Either post to the group or e-mail
>me.
>
>Chris Birn
>cbirn@sdcc13.ucsd.edu

I suggest that you post to rec.arts.theatre (or the stagecraft mailing
list - stagecraft@jaguar.cs.utah.edu) as those sources tend to get
much more traffic than alt.stagecraft.  I have crossposted and
directed followups to rec.arts.theatre as "Into the Woods" has been
getting extensive discussion in that group.

To answer your questions:

1) Unless you have the time and energy to do a good job of the witch
levitation, why do it at all?  It is not required for the story (it is
only noted as stage direction in the script).

2) I have done the witch transformation two different ways:
  a) During that entire scene, the witch was overdressed with the ugly
  cape on top of a nice dress.  She had nice makeup, but still had her
  ugly nose tacked on.  She had a hood on her cape which hid most of
  her face and she spent most of the scene facing upstage.  The
  transformation included much FX (smoke, flash, etc) but basically
  came down to her pulling off the nose and dropping the cape.
  b) The entire scene before the transformation was done with a witch
  double (either Snow White or Sleeping Beauty) with the real witch
  speaking into a wireless offstage.  While this sounds like it would
  not work, no one ever noticed that we were using a double!  The
  makeup was heavy enough and the light dim enough that they couldn't
  tell that it was not the real witch.  This allowed the real witch to
  get in her "nice" dress and makeup during the previous scene.  For
  the transformation, the double stood and raised her arms out
  spreading her cape.  She then started to spin around.  The real
  witch came up behind her (our set allowed her to sneak back there)
  did a half spin with her and then the double dropped off upstage
  again and snuck off as the real witch continued the spin.  I am not
  doing a great job of describing this, but it worked very well and when
  we talked with audience members, none of them had noticed the changeover.

Of the two ways, I think that using the double worked the best.


							Bart

PS: Have fun calling the show.  There is so much jumping about from
one location to another (both in the opening scene inbetween the
various houses and in the show in general from location to location)
that this can be a _very_ difficult show to call.  The version I stage
managed had over 500 light cues, 100 sound cues, and 100 shift cues.
Newsgroups: alt.stagecraft