Here's the first of my preparatory drawings for the set. These are actually the most recent but I wanted to post them earlier rather than later. I need to decide what kinds of shape the trees should be and how many branches they have. The trees will be a dark purple and they'll be sitting on this pink foam surface on casters. I'd like the woods to feel really large- much larger than the actors on the stage- my instinct is to have the trees be like the ones on the top row- tall with most of the branches implied to be offstage- it's a little simpler and cleaner and implies that the trees are much bigger than they are.
Here's a drawing to give you a more clear understanding of how the trees would function. I think in person they'll be much cooler- think of this drawing like furniture instructions from IKEA.
The trees will sit on pink foam which sits on plywood which has casters attached to the bottom. This way the trees can be moved between scenes and imply that the woods are changing and getting deeper or simply different.
All kinds of floura (and fauna?) will be below the base of the trees stuck into the pink foam. I'm thinking teal glitter ferns and plants made from paper covered in glitter, red mushrooms, and silver flowers made from glitter pom-pons and sparkly mylar foil table toppers. I'd even like one that's only the smaller plant life. This will be a lot but they should be easy to make- I'm toying with the idea of having a big afterschool workshop or X block flower and fern making glitter party so students we could get a lot done and expand the amount of kids who are working on the set (and for John- it could promote the crew-especially if we invite MS kids).
The sparkly parts on the forest floor will twinkle slightly all throughout the musical, constantly reminding you of the wood's presence even when the action is upstage or in the houses. The glitter also references the unnatural, or magical and unexpected parts of the woods. Plus Little Red gets to pick some of them early on in the first act, since they just stick in to the foam this should be relatively easy.
I'm like the bases being rectangular as a reference to Roxy Paine but they could easily be a more free form and organic shape.
