Stacks of Books & Blocks

Helping with the show, “Matilda” has been a wonderful experience reconnecting with my high school theater program. I was given the project of figuring out how to make a set of four twelve-foot towers to stand in front of each of the legs onstage. How can I design it to be stable, yet light, tall and precarious looking, yet not going to tip onto the actors.

I started off by making a scale model to think out the ideas physically. We then soon realized the lower half of the stack could be much more solid to support the more precarious top. We utilized 3’ theater cubes for letter blocks, as well as 3’ wood frames with cardboard stapled to the front to represent book spines. To complete the illusion, we made 18x24” frames, covered in cardboard and given the texture of pages bu stacking thin strips of corrugated plastic yard signs so they could read from a distance on stage.

The top section is made from document boxes that have been cut in half, stacked and threaded onto a PVC pipe we attached to the base. To add whimsicality and a Roald Daul look, we added large marker doodles to the towers and attached some found items a little girl might have in her playroom.

BIGGEST CHALLENGES

The fun and scary part of volunteering on Saturdays at a high school is you never know what you’re going to find when you come back a week later. Some of the craftsmanship was not up to my standards, but as long as the students were learning, engaged, and creating a structurally sound piece of the set, I was happy to hand over the plans during the week.