Carrie
Directed by Mark Femia
Francis Parker School
Winter 2017
Carrie was a blast, and also a bit of a challenge for me, as I had a couple of student designers! Working more as advisor, charge artist and technical director than designer made me stretch myself. As the properties designer, however, I was primarily responsible for the creation of the “magic” that Carrie performs, as well as the blood drop, and those two things were more than enough to keep me busy!
The lighting was also great fun on Carrie, as I got to match that to the magic as well!
Francis Parker School
Winter 2017
Carrie was a blast, and also a bit of a challenge for me, as I had a couple of student designers! Working more as advisor, charge artist and technical director than designer made me stretch myself. As the properties designer, however, I was primarily responsible for the creation of the “magic” that Carrie performs, as well as the blood drop, and those two things were more than enough to keep me busy!
The lighting was also great fun on Carrie, as I got to match that to the magic as well!
Inspiration Images
Magic Design
The first magic trick in the show is a rising crucifix. This was achieved by simply attaching the crucifix to fishing line, which ran over the flats, through an eye-bolt, and to a carabiner on the back. A crew member simply unhooked the carabiner, pulled the line to a specific mark, and then slowly let it slide back to place on cue. Because of the tendency of the crucifix to flip, we ran the line beneath a slightly curved plate.
See it work below! 
For Carrie to be able to slam shut the windows magically, we found a relatively simple solution. Here you can see the 1" dowels with fishing line attached to the top, propping up the window. When the line was yanked, the dowel flew out of the window, letting it slam shut. The dowel was painted black, to match the background, and became virtually invisible.
See it go below! 
The final bit of magic in this show was the mom's heart exploding. For this, we again went with a very simple solution. The actress playing the mom wore two sports bras beneath her costume. Tucked between the bras for the final scene was an open plastic baggie of our fake blood. When the moment came, she clutched the bag, forcing the blood to overflow, drenching the chest of her costume.
See it work below! |
The second magic trick was for books to spring off of the bookshelf. To do this, we butchered the back of a bookshelf, leaving slits across the middle of each open shelf. Then we made pieces of false back which fit between the shelves. These had 1x2 "handles" attached and threaded through the slits. In this way, the "back" of each shelf could be used to push off the contents of the shelf. The religious icons that were meant to stay in place were heavily glued down. A crew member hid behind the bookshelf to push each shelf and then shake the entire thing as Carrie practiced on it.
See those books fly below! The blood drop was the trickiest of the "magic", as there were two parts to this task. The first tasks was for me to find blood that was safe for the actress. We had to assume that it might get in her eyes and mouth, and thus it couldn't contain typical fake blood components like dish soap. However, we also had to be able to wash it out of the costumes and off of the set every night, so it had to be washable, which also eliminated several common theater blood recipes.
I finally found a company that provided the perfect concoction, and in three different consistencies. Thus, we were able to have one that gushed all over her like old pig's blood, and another that freely ran down her leg in an earlier scene. The second component of this was the actual drop. Our drop buckets went through several iterations and tests, before finding one that would work consistently every night. What didn't hit the actress was collected in a tray built into the platform and drained out into a bucket hidden beneath it. We also had a towel hidden at the foot of the platform's stairs, for the actress to discreetly wipe her shoes as she stepped down, as the blood was quite slippery. After the show each night, an army of crew swept in with mops and rags to clean the blood off of everything and every one! See the drop work below! |
Properties/Technical Direction
Final Look
