Aladdin Family Series, Riverside Community Players, February 2004
February 2004, Riverside Community Players presented the Family Series production of Aladdin. Dona tech directed the show and Kassandra, Danielle and I worked on the set. I also ran sound and Dona ran lights for the production. Colin Marshall produced the fog effects. More detail can be found here.
send an email to rsisk@rsisk.com if you have any comments or additions.
 
 
 
Early stages of set construction. The arches (or as we like to call them the "Golden Arches") and the skyline pieces were constructed from 2 inch thick EPS styrofoam and covered with PolyTech stucco.

The floor was the same cobblestone floor that Karri Bates originally did for Beauty and the Beast earlier in the year. It was also used for Christmas Carol and The Cemetery Club and will also be used in Fools. Lots of mileage out of that floor, thanks Karri!

 
It's kind of hard to see, but that is Larry Bates on the catwalk getting ready to set some lights.
A slightly better picture of Larry on the catwalk.
 
Drizzle, drazzle, drizzle, drome
Time to make some styrofoam

The styrofoam pieces were fun to play with but were quite a pain when clean up time came.

Backstage at the foam factory.
Some of the early rocks that were cut for the cave are seen here, although they were later tossed because they did'nt look that good.

We also found that we could get styrofoam waste pieces from a company here in Riverside.
Here you can see a 4x8x12" piece of styrofoam that we got for free, it eventually became the cave.

 
Kassandra is painting the Golden Arches, golden.

Initially we cut these shapes out with a electric kitchen knife. This worked OK for the smaller pieces but quickly failed when trying to cut the rocks for the cave.
Larry picked up a bigger electric saw that we used to cut the cave pieces.

Dona and Connie stripping Scheherezade's couch.
The couch required a complete rebuilding and recovering in order to be usable in the play.
Required three days of effort from both Dona and Connie.
 
The finished Scheherezade couch in the background
Kassandra is in the foreground.
The King's throne in the foreground.
This was originally a yellow and light blue pattern material, which doesn't exactly evoke royalty.
Connie pulled an all nighter recovering the throne.
What would we do without you, Connie?
 
Dona hanging out in the tech booth.
A city far to the east.

Well, OK, maybe some styrofoam onion domes stuck up on the wall.
Whatever happened to those things after the show?

 
Ah, the magical chest full of props, and gold, and beads, and magical things...

Is that a black and yellow or purple and gold?

Wayne Astin, the theatre's technical manager, gets jiggy with the Exit lights.
 
And Kassandra magically levitates a screwdriver out of the trash can.

Well, not really, she is putting a new heating element into the dry ice fog machine.

Kassandra and the fog machine go one-on-one in a fight to the death.
 
Here Kassandra is testing the chemical fog machines used in the genie effect.

The genie effect was accomplished by placing two chemical fog machines (purchased as Spencers for about $40) into the wooden box scene here.
Scheherezade then placed the lamp on the box.
A green special was lighted on the fog as it came out of the box, while the fog was being produced, the genie would step behind the fog, and then would be hit down low and from behind with a bright white light as the green special light was turned off. This created a huge shadow of the Genie in the fog.
During this effect, O fortuna was playing loudly from the speakers.
The genie would then step through the fog and "magically" appear.
A very dramatic effect.

Two fog machines produced a lot of fog as seen here.
 
Kassandra, in the Lewis room, with the fog machine.
Andrea working in the box office.
 
Ack, don't know what this is.
Testing out time exposure from the tech booth. Looking at 12 o'clock towards the cave.
 
Yikes! Over exposure.
The magician rips off the towns people.
 
More magician.
Scherezade tells the story.
 
Karri as Scherezade.
The actors affect a large rock in front of the cave, notice the fog starting to fill the cave.
 
The fog machine is cranking now. Colin is off 12 o'clock working the dry ice fog machine.
The fog would go halfway across the arena.
 
Aladdin enters the cave.
The cave was lit with blue lights and there were two multi-beam red lights criss-crossing inside the cave.
 
It looked very cool!
Kind of tough to see, but this is the genie effect.
 
A huge genie shadow in the fog.
Colin working crushing dry ice for the fog machine.