Apollo Design | Boneyard

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Boneyard Prayer

Redmoon Theatre
Produced at Redmoon Central

Conceived and directed by Frank Maugeri
Original music: Charles Kim
Text and lyrics: Seth Bockley
Set Design: Tracy Otwell
Lighting Design: John Horan
Puppets: Jesse Bullock
Projections: Tracy Otwell
Stage Manager: Shena Williams
Photos: Sean Williams
Producer: Rebecca Hunter

About the Show:
Boneyard Prayer explores struggle, sorrow, and salvation, drawing from such varied sources as William Kennedy's Ironweed, Dante's Inferno, T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men, tramp art, Santos sculpture, and other period literature, music, and art. Boneyard Prayer tells a Depression-era tale of one man’s fractured life and ultimate redemption using various forms of puppetry and shadow images, along with extraordinary music inspired by the songs of the age.

The Approach:
When first speaking with Frank and Seth, the phraze "Hobo Opera" kept coming into the conversation. Knowing that the idea of redemption was a huge part of the plot, Frank Discussed the idea of the story taking place in a limbo or purgatory setting. With all this in mind I knew that my job was to:

Create illumination
Create Darkness
Pull People and Objects out of the Darkness
Create Shadows
Build out of the darkness to create the proper atmosphere around the action.
Create beauty with-in a desolate world.
Create a Point of View to highlight mood, time and character.
Highlight the Puppets and objects
Work with the Shadow Art on RP Screen

The set was to be several crates of dirt in which people could dig objects out of. The background was a full stage projection screen where shadow shows were created on overhead projectors from upstage. This was all framed by a four sided proscenium which created the feeling of looking through a window into the world of the play.

In the beginning of the process, the biggest element of the story telling was to be done by several "grave diggers" manipulating close to life sized puppets of the main characters Martin and Alice. There is a Third life sized puppet of their dead child that is usually held and manipulated by the female grave diggers throughout the show until the very end. After previewing the show we found that it was best to have a principle male and female to operate Martin and Alice respectively. This was done with the help of the other grave diggers. This way the audience could identify with a human but at the same time be able to escape to the world of the puppets.

With this in mind I knew "key light" would play a big role in my plot. With tight selective light, the puppeteers could play in the light, sometimes joining the puppet in the light then backing out or hiding to make the scene all about the puppet. With smart actors, the show really was beautiful because of this very selective key light cutting through the saturated color.

Colors:
A6400 and A4950 in the side boom shin positions were very effective as dirty and scary body color. Equally effective was, A4400 in the side boom mid positions for what I call warm ups. (I found that in a dirty show, Amber color ads to the unsettling deep blue with lots of red in the spectrum works perfectly in this setting to create the "warm" feeling that we needed for flashbacks to happier times or Reunions with long lost loves)

A2020 in a moonscape breakup pattern from high side right, worked very well against A4300 in the custom scrolls from the PAR 64 Side Positions.

A6400 in an industrial pattern fanning out from overhead worked well with the sepia tones of the shadow shows during travel sequences.

Gear:

I used two Apollo Right-arms for the moving specials or "key light."
Four Apollo Smart Colors with custom strings supplied the all encompassing saturated color from the high side/latter position in PAR 64 1kw WFLs.
Two Apollo Smart Moves created a sparkle effect on the RP screen and shot out over the audience through the haze at the end of the show.
Haze came from a Radiance hazer by LeMaitre.
ERS Units used were ETC Source 4 750 and 575 lamps with 50, 36, 26, and 19 degree lens tubes Supplied by Chicago Spotlight.
Wash units used were and assortment of ETC Source 4 PARs, ETC Parnells as well as Altman PAR 64s.
The show was programmed on an ETC Express 250.