Model Making: Tapes and Glues

Just found a great discussion (by an architect who obviously builds models) of various tapes and glues at youngarchitect.com.  HERE.

To which I'd add a recommendation of gaf tape - wonderful gaf tape!  On stage, of course, it's ubiquitous, but it's also useful in tiny amounts in model-making, especially used as hinges between cardboard pieces.  Particularly if it's a painted model.

And I'd add a caution about all glues - and even tapes - to beware the fumes and chemicals involved.  You can develop chemical sensitivities to the stickem if it touches your skin; the fumes can be sickening, carcinogenic, or occasionally instantly fatal like the methylene chloride used in paint strippers.

Ventilate, people!  Read safety instructions!

"Black Gaffer Tape" by c Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia

ADDENDUM:

Also helpful is a brief post on the same site about building architectural scenic models HERE.

Stupid Superstition

Theater people can be a bit... superstitious..

Of course they are!  Anyone who invests as much time, effort, money, ego etc. into an endeavor whose result - Smash Hit :)  or Turkey :(  - is mostly outside your control is going to believe in luck.  It's a thing.

The most famous of these superstitions is, of course, not speaking the name of That Play inside a theater.  (Or outside of a theater if you can help it.)  You know, the McPlay.  The Scottish Play.  And don't say the name of the principal characters either.  Call them "the Thane and his wife" or "the McBs" or something.

This is a superstition I don't particularly share, but some actors get so visibly upset when it's crossed that I go along.  When I remember.  (I've goofed and had to spin three times and spit and whateverall.)  No, I'd be happy to design The Scottish Play again.  It's Stephen King's Misery I balk at: I absolutely know that story, set in the aftermath of a car wreck, has nothing whatsoever to do with my totaling my truck driving home from that theater in the rain... but once is enough for me, thanks.

The one little silly theater superstition I do have - one I suspect I share, unadmitted, with a few other set-people - is that all really good shows n' sets get a little blood on 'em.  In ancient days a human sacrifice slaked mortar at foundations of great buildings or bodies were buried under stones, as at Stonehenge.  This seems barbaric and unnecessary today, of course, because, despite OSHA, nearly all major architectural or engineering projects cost a life or a serious injury anyway, even when trying not to shed blood.  Great construction takes its toll.

Anyway.

All My Sons took its blood and was a terrific show.  I stapled myself to the wisteria-draped set of Enchanted April and that was great.  A dancer sprained something for the wonderful Urinetown.  Now Lovers & Executioners, which has already claimed a broken toe (kicking the pile of research books counts as play-related, no?) has now collected a bit of blood from me too...

By golly! I demand apparent "broken bottles" on the top of that garden wall for this play about adultery, but I thought the plastic bottles I was breaking would be safer.

Silly me.

Vintage good luck card from Freestock.ca

The other famous theater superstition? Never say "Good Luck"!  Say "Break a Leg!"

Or, in this case, a Toe.

Tech Details

It's a lovely thing to have a set pretty well finished for Tech.

This does not always happen.

But today I was onstage doing the sort of little but vital details I always hope to be able to do forTech. Instead of painting huge - belated - items or hauling heavy - belated - furniture, I got to haul wonderfully light thumbtacks!

These tacks have become - for me at least - a bit of an in-joke.  They read so oddly in a Rehearsal Report but turn out to be an important safety issue: an actor is slammed up against the cork board.  Obviously push pins would hurt and pop loose while nice flat Safety Thumbtacks will not.  See?

Details are important.  

public domain photos - messed with

Among the other details I worked on today for this set's imaginary Break Room:

1)   A few more signs.
2)  A clutter of mop, mop bucket, etc. in the hall outside the door.  (A dozen people may see this.)
3)  Covering table tops with plastic.
4)  Adding faux "store" labels on shopping carts.

and

5) Dressing the inside of a cabinet so that, when opened, it looks lived in too.  I raided the prop room for misc. coffee mugs, glasses, a Girl Scout cookie box, and misc. hot chocolate, tea, and other hot-drink boxes... some filched from the theater's  real break room.

Each detail (which the audience will hardly notice) adds noticeably to the success of the set by making it safer, better under theatrical lights (those dark tables), or simply more realistic.

Adding a mere mop bucket outside a door can make a whole theatrical world deeper.

Earlier post on thumbtacks HERE.