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Kansas---
Here is the farmhouse flat built with forced perspective and on a rolling truck. The door should be practical. Behind is a sky/horizon sepia painted drop. I'd like some real texture on the house--individual rough-edged planks rather than just painted on ones. Real shingles or something similar would be cool too. I like the idea of having a couple removable planks so the house looks damaged when it appears in Munchkin Land.
Munchkin Land---
There are 7 oval platforms that kind of nest into eachother in some places. The platforms are covered in astroturf. A couple painted ramps/bridges connect them. There are five munchkin house flats. I don't believe the doors and windows need to be practical. The houses are painted and have carved foam applied in some places to suggest stone/roof shingles/etc.
Behind the platforms is the Munchkin Land ground row--flat painted houses with astroturf and gold glitter striped hills.
Downstage is a round astroturf mat with the yellowbrick road swirl. I'm wondering--should the road be painted on? glued on? advice?
This is the first piece of the Emerald City set--the city gates. It's on two rolling trucks split in the middle. The doors and triangle-shaped wing-like things are made of painted lauan and have 1/2 round gold-painted foam stripes/rays. The walls are made of that green, semi-transparent plastic/fiberglass (which one would be better?) corrugated material often used as patio roofing. It will be lit from behind with uplights fixed to the platform. The small round window in the door needs to be practical.
I'm still working on the other Emerald City set pieces but this is what I am planning:
When the gatekeeper "opens" the gates the two trucks will separate and roll off stage left and stage right. At the same time the black traveler will open to reveal the EMERALD CITY DROP. There will probably be one or two other rolling set pieces that will be shared between the emerald city scene and the wizard's chamber scene. I'm working on that right now.
Witch's castle wall--FLIES IN. For the interior castle scenes, the platform (seen below) rolls in. For the exterior scene, vine cutouts fly in in front of it. The same vine cutout will be used for the haunted forest (not shown yet)
Witch's castle wall with rolling platform. The platform has a practical jail door underneath where Dorothy is held. Bars could be metal or pvc--thoughts? I'd love real texture on the platform faces and the giant wall pillars--foam? homosote? other thoughts?
There are two grates on top of the platform. They need to be open underneath to some degree so that 1) smoke can rise up through them and 2) actors can stick their head up through them into the crystal ball (not shown).
Here is a rough idea of what is missing still:
The Gypsy Wagon--will look something like
this but done theatre style--not full size and with forced perspective so that set piece is only a couple feet deep and perhaps 6 feet long.
The Scarecrow's perch---
something like
thisbut without the backdrop. Just roughly a 3'x6' rolling unit.
The TinMan's house--
another flat on a rolling truck, relatively small though. I think his little shack will be about 8' tall, 6' wide and then there has to be some small platform or ledge or ladder behind it so the witch can appear "on top" of it. Again, I'll give you details as I design them.
Haunted Forest vines--
like in the bottom picture on
this page But only one layer deep cause I only have one line set for this.
SHEW!! What a big show. Well, that's what I have up to this moment. I'm doing my best to get more details. But I hope this gives you somewhere to start,
