I wanted the Bucket house and the town to look gray, cold and lifeless.

I put the bucket house on two 8×8 foot rolling platforms.I usually use 1×4 to frame flats, but this time I used 2×4.  I was able to get a hold of corrugated tin for the walls. That was a major stroke of luck.  I asked parents of actors what junk they might have lying around.  Lucky me!  One parent happened to bring me 3 pieces of tin that were 20 feet long… and a rusty broken motorcycle and other rusty junk.  We cut the long pieces into smaller pieces and attached them to the wall frames.

I had the helped put them at odd angles because I wanted the house to look like it was a shanty town house.  It worked!

My next favorite piece from this show was the boat.  I found some crazy picture of a paper fold boat on Pinterest and wanted to give it a try.  I had a small platform we put on castors.  Then we attached cardboard (not my favorite medium, but it works).  We painted it white and then attached text (a nice parent owned a vinyl printer and made vinyl letters).  Once again, I was vetoed.  The choreographer was really bothered that the boat wasn’t pink… even if it looked super pink in the lighting.  We ended up “pink” washing it.

My next tricky thing was the chocolate factory.  Somehow I needed to make a colorful environment that transformed into rooms.  I started with a turn table.  The turn table we build 4 years ago was a mess.  People did not build it my way.  They did it a weird way.  I had the help take it all apart and start over… my way.