When I was a junior in high school, Hazen High mounted their production of Brigadoon. It was an all-school play, one that involved the drama, band and choral departments.
I only got involved in the whole thing because Mrs. Hacker, my journalism teacher, was the producer of the show.
Before you think I went out for the lead, you’re wrong. That was Mike Webster and Curtis Watson. I wasn’t in the orchestra, because they didn’t have French horns. I wasn’t a highland dancer and I wasn’t in the chorus. I wasn’t even singing back then.
No, I was a behind the scenes guy. I was charged with helping build the sets. That proved to be the true adventure in this whole saga, and it’s what I want to share today.
Hazen High didn’t have an auditorium or theater. Budget cuts prevented that. The school has one now, but back in the day we had to do the play in the gymnasium. This, of course, presents problems because there’s no wings, no back stage. Everything is there all the time and there’s no way to fly things in and out for set changes.
Because we were in the gym, the sets had to be extra large, too. Otherwise they would been swallowed up by the cavernous space. But not so tall that they interfered with the basketball hoops.
That required building a life-sized cottage, the task of which fell to me.
I went to work, designing this monument to my big ideas. It was to be a real show-stopper, some 20 feet long and 8 feet high with a real thatched roof. We had to construct it in the prop room of the school, which was up on the second floor. It was a truly mammoth undertaking, largely because I had designed it so it could be turned around twice during the play, to expose the interior for cottage scenes inside.
It was beautiful, I must admit. I was very proud of all the detailing that went into it, right down to the chimney on the outside and the wood graining on the door. When it was done, it was time to move it to the gym.
True to form, I hadn’t thought much about transporting it anywhere. Today, I am reminded of the potty stool my dad had built for the boys so we could pee in the big boy potty. By the time my father was done with this seemingly simple stool it resembled a three-sided choir riser that was too heavy for my mom to lift.
This was my potty stool. It managed to fit through the door height-wise because the roof section was a separate piece that would be added on later. I had factored that into the design. However, the 20 feet in length didn’t allow it to be turned in the hallway, which was only 15 feet wide. Oops!
We pondered for a long time about what to do. There was only one solution… saw it in half behind the chimney. Egad! It was like sawing my daughter in half. It was so painful. Worse, it compromised the carefully thought out structure I had built into the interior so that it could be lifted and spun around. All the work on the interior was for naught – the cottage interior would never see the light of a spot.
I’m not sure what I was thinking anyway. We would have had to take this monstrosity down one flight of stairs and up another to make it to the gym. But as you know, when does logic ever enter the picture when I have a grand plan.
Once it had made its way to the gym I was obsessed with restoring its ability to turn. I added some beams, lots of bolts and screws. But when we tried to lift it, it sagged dangerously in the middle and the added weight was just too much for a bunch of high school kids to lift safely without getting a hernia.
Oh, well. That’s show biz. Still, it looked beautiful and the thatching on the roof really made it look real. It also probably made it quite a fire hazard.
We had to do a lot of other improvisation when it came to turning the gym into a mystical Scottish town that only appeared one day every hundred years. There was no disguising the lines on the basketball court, but we decided no one would notice them in a darkened gym.
However, the grassy, treed glen presented more problems. We created the highland hills from stage platforms but covering them with grass was going to be tough. Then it dawned on someone to borrow artificial grass from the local cemetery. They used this grass to cover the area around the open plots and then placed them over the plots after the dirt had been tossed back in over the coffin. It was creepy fun spreading out 30 or so 4′ x 8′ pieces of dead guy grass over the staging. We also got some Christmas trees to create the forest. They too were a huge fire hazard but at least if they caught fire, the grass below them would only melt.
There was one last problem that had to be solved from a staging perspective. The script called for a mist to creep into the dell where the lead characters were. It was through this mist that they would see Brigadoon magically appear.
That required a fog machine. And it fell to Tim Davidson and I to test it. We were supposed to wait for Mrs. Hacker but Tim really wanted to try this thing out. We were so curious to see how much fog was required to create the effect we were after. As I said, it takes two boys to create stupidity.
We plugged it in, turned it on and made some fog. Not enough, said Tim. He continued. Then more. Then more. Before we knew it the entire gym was so thick with fog we could barely see one another. Tim “Foggy” Davidson had had his day.
It was then we discovered two big problems with the fog machine idea. One was that the chemical used made the gym smell like burned oil. The audience wouldn’t appreciate that. When we sat down to consider this issue, we found the second problem. When the fog settled there it left an oily sheen. The entire gym floor and the bleachers had to be cleaned from top to bottom.
It was about this time that Mrs. Hacker walked into the fog bound gym. She was not a happy girl. The blame fell to Foggy, not me. I was teacher’s pet by then, her journalism golden boy.
There would be no fog in Brigadoon. The only mist was in Foggy’s eyes as Mrs. Hacker yelled at him, followed by the janitor’s sharp words, who had to clean up our mess.
Out on the Treasure Coast, which is due for some fog today, just as soon as I find that damned machine,
– Robb