MMM...Brains

As promised, here is the second installment on my prop work for Plays & Players' production of A NEW BRAIN by William Finn.  Last week I discussed the food I created for the show.  This week, it's all about a brain.  Gordon's Brain specifically.

Director Daniel Student explained his vision to me at our first meeting and I was both inspired and challenged at the same time.  Basically, we needed a head that would house a brain that would have pieces of paper inside of it which represented all of Gordon's songs waiting to be written. After some brainstorming (haha), I presented him with a design and the pictures can tell the rest of the story.  It was a lot of fun to make and I'm happy to say Gordon's Brain remains one of my favorite props to date.

 Gordon's head was made from a styrofoam wig

  form that I split in half and shelled out to hold Gordon's Brain.  

Above, the raw brain before cooking and then after it had hardened and was painted with a red base coat. 

 

The holes in the picture to the left housed the rolled up pieces of sheet music that Gordon handed out to the other characters as seen in the photo at the bottom.   





  It came onstage as part of a full body replica of Gordon being wheeled in on a gurney so I tried to make the head form look as much like Brendan Norton as possible.

Magnets were added to avoid the head opening accidentally and a twine hinge was placed on the back of the head to keep it as one unit once it was opened. 

Here we see The Doctor (Joe Sabotino) explaining to The Mother (Susan Johnson) how a shunt was going to be used to drain fluid from Gordon's brain. 

Gordon pulls the songs literally from his brain.

Brain Food

Recently, I had the fortune to be asked to come aboard the creative team mounting William Finn's musical, A New Brain at Plays and Players in Philadelphia. The production was directed by Daniel Student, set designed by Andrew Thompson and I had help on props from Jacob Riley. Daniel is a director with a wild imagination and his vision for this production was bold. The props were a definite challenge as the musical mostly takes place in a hospital where a semi-lucid composer attempts to write his greatest songs before dying from a brain disease. It's actually a lot funnier and uplifting than it sounds. There were the usual medical props required: IV stands, x-rays, gurneys and medical charts. All of which were hard to come by, but there were also some specialty items that needed to be created, which gave me the chance to flex my creative muscles. I'll talk about the brains in another post. Today: FOOD.

Three items of food appeared onstage - baked ziti, a goat cheese salad (no cheese) and scallopini (oh - and a diet coke). Since the food was rushed around on a tray by a frenetic waitress during a fast-paced musical number and seen onstage for less than five minutes, Andrew Beal, like all good Production Managers, requested we avoid real food to cut down on costs and save pre-show food prep time. I was happy to oblige and created the items out of simple materials pulled from around my studio and the theater; a bit of foam from here, some fabric from over there, a bit of sculpting and painting and done.

Baked Ziti - To create the baked ziti, I carved a piece of foam to shape, painted and sprayed with a glaze finish to give it that moist look. The green garnish is a piece of dried latex paint found in the shop stuck on top. The whole piece is glued to the plate for ease of movement.

 

Goat Cheese Salad - To create the goat cheese salad, I cut up random pieces of green fabric found around the studio and hot glued them to the bowl. The croutons are simple pieces of the same foam I used on the ziti.

   

 Scallopini - To create the scallopini, I cut out a thin layer of cardboard and glued a few smaller strips of cardboard to the top. Then I wrapped the whole thing in masking tape and painted to look like cooked veal. The garnish consisted of round balls of foam painted green and glued to the top to serve as capors and the whole thing is drizzled with a thin line of orange acrylic paint. Mmmmm... During the previews, Daniel said he couldn't really see what was on the plate from farther back in the audience, so added another piece of dried latex paint to the dish.

  

Oh & a Diet Coke - Luckily, we had this plastic cup in stock that already had bubbles in it. By adding a few squares of brown gel (graciously donated by lighting designer, Joe Glodek), a pipe joiner for weight and a straw to the inside of the cup, the drink was complete and looked great onstage.