Safe as Houses: Technical Direction, Swingy Door
Safe as Houses was a student written show, which was my first experience with college student theatre. I handled technical direction, which mostly revolved around working within the limitations of the student theatre. These included means of constructing the set on the challenging budget of $250, building it in a compact way that could be moved in to the space and assembled in a single day, and finding a way to securely mount flats vertically on the edges of provided platforms that we could not alter or damage. Also, there was one special effect, which was creating a door that would be capable of swinging violently without an apparent cause, as if by a forceful gale.
The set was simply a kitchen on an upper level and a living space on some level below that, with a few doors in and out of the space.
Construction took place mostly in a very cold garage an hour away from the school. The night before the show, I tied the flats to the roof of a car and we drove them through rain to begin work with assembly.
I learned to appreciate sandbags a lot.
As for the swinging door, I took inspiration from the swinging wall I executed for Abuela's apartment in my In The Heights set design. A tie line connected to the door and ran discreetly along the floor to two tiny holes in the adjacent walls where they were run through pulleys.
From the pulleys, the pair of lines ran backstage to either side of a swinging arm. This arm could be spun by an operator to control the door. I allowed some slack in the lines so that when the arm is being operated vigorously and it suddenly changes direction, there is some time for the door to swing and catch, resulting in some nice whiplash for the door.
We were able to fall under our skinny budget in a few ways. Craigslist was an asset for attaining the cabinets and countertop. We were able to get a refrigerator for free from my mom. For construction, I made the call to skimp on the standard 1x4" boards for the flats, and instead go with thinner and cheaper 1x2" boards. This sufficed fine. The final blessing that brought us through under budget was the donation of several sheets of luan.
