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The Dinosaur Play- Designer's Notes: The Dinosaur show is a children’s play written for elementary school children. It involves the children in an effort to find a mother and father for the baby dinosaur. The narrator leads them through various adventures as they locate, first a mother and then a father, and fight off the dangerous Tyrannosaurus Rex along the way. I approached this design by looking at illustrated children’s books about dinosaurs to find out what the kids had already been taught to see as the appropriate environment for a dinosaur. The costumes, which were being reused from a previous production, were in a cartoon style so I wanted a look that would compliment this. I had the special challenge of creating this set to go on top of a pre-existing set that was in place for the adult production of “Forever Plaid”, which was being done in the same space in the evenings. I also had only two weeks to design and build this show, as I was contacted late in the process. These constraints meant that I had some choices already made for me. The director had already planned on using the backdrop rig, which can be seen in the photo. It was a rig that could be quickly assembled by the actors, who were the only crew, and had been used previously by the company, so a backdrop to fit it was already in existence. This meant that we did not have to spend the time to build it. I painted over the old drop to get the right look. Fortunately the drop was not too thickly encrusted with paint. The biggest challenge was to integrate the step unit that ran across the back of the set and was a major element in it. The director had originally envisioned covering it with some sort of drop but I was concerned that they actors and children might be injured if this covering slipped while they were running up and down the steps. After some consideration, I developed a ground drop for the rest of the floor, which used the existing paint scheme on the stairs but melded into something more appropriate for our show, thus avoiding any safety concerns on the steps.
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