Annie Jump and the Library of Heaven
Directed by Susanna Rinehart
Scenic Design by Derek Smith
Costume Design by Noah Zirk
Lighting Design by John Ambrosone
Props Design by David Utley
Sound Design by Allen Sanders
Stage Managed by Alexandra Wyant
Technical Direction by Ethan Rosing
A Magic 8 Ball falls from the sky.
The effect was created by gutting and reassembling a Magic 8 Ball as well as adding a few electronics to the inside to give it an internal glow. To keep things simple the ball is fed into a twin door dropper and an operator pulls a string for the quick release. The ball drops 30 feet into a 9 inch deep box (upstage of the rock formation) with a faux-grass covering stretched over and beyond it. When the ball makes impact with the covering it softly catches the ball much like a baseball glove closing onto the ball and stopping all motion and allows the actor to grab it.
A lab explosion.
This effect was created by wiring a custom debris cannon and industrial strobe light together. The lab desk is a rolling unit with pneumatic brakes. There is a small 1 gallon tank (McMaster #9888K9, a favorite of mine) that feeds both the brakes and debris cannon as well as a small 12V battery that powers the solenoid for the debris cannon and the strobe light. The cannon uses a mixture of mylar and clean fine dust. The effect is triggered via a button hidden on the upstage side of the desk by the seated actor.
The scenic design consisted of a few smaller moving units and prominently featured a contoured hill the full width of the stage in addition to some rocks, masking, and a black rear projection screen. After looking at a number of options and sampling a few. It was decided that the following method would allow us to produce a structure closest to the designer’s vision. The hill is made of 33 ribs. A 3D solid was created from the designer’s drawing by using the top, front, side, and center section. This was done with a combination of mapping, scaling profiles, and lofting and then intersecting the resulting lofted solid onto the solid created from the top, side, and front projections. From this new, final, 3D solid 34 slices were made that captured the profile on 1 foot centers, the ribs. The 33 ribs were laid out and gridded onto 3/4 inch sheets of plywood. To increase the strength of the ribs scraps of 3/8 inch MDF was laminated to the top of each rib on both faces and routed to match the rib giving a total thickness of 1-1/2 inches to the top of the ribs this increased thickness also allowed for increased glue surface area and ease of stapling the underlayment. In addition, courses of blocking were installed between each rib and carved to match the profiles (https://katools.com/galahad-cg/).Once the structure was completed the first layer of 1-1/4 inch x 1/4 inch strips of lauan were added. With each of the three layers the angle was alternated and each successive layer gradually smoothed out the surface. Once everything had time to cure it was cleaned up and the sections of faux grass were added.
