"Blitz" Bottles!

We continued our old "Parent Blitz Day" tradition of treating the families to pizza and snacks out of the show budget. It's the least we could do to thank them for all the awesome work and creativity!

The gang was encouraged to drink lots of soda in order to free up more empty 2-liter bottles for the set! The bottoms were cut off the bottles and spray painted gold. The remainder of each bottle was put in the recycling bin, by the way. (And we heard that drama teachers as far away as Australia read this blog, so please note that "Cheerwine" is a Southern cherry cola, not a wine!)

The the facia of the platforming was prepared. First we stapled some very regal-looking maroon velour fabric to the front. The fabric has a highly reflective bias in the weave that looks shiny from different angles. (One of the world's leading theatrical drape manufacturers is right here in Greensboro, so each year Mr. Lowell runs and gets truckloads of free scraps and remnants of fine velour curtains!)

Next, gold colored hardward was fastened across the leading edge to secure the velour against tread wear during the show. To the folks at Home Depot, this trim is expensive sheetrock wall edging, but to Mr. Lowell, these funky trapizoid contours will look like fine palace detailing from the audience's point of view.

Finally, the golden "rosettes" are secured in place using one 3" drywall screw right through the middle. Since we had a shortage of the 2-liter bottles, we spaced them 3 feet apart, with two smaller water bottles in between. Each level of platforming will have a different layout of these rosettes for more interesting variety in design. Later this week the flooring of these platforms will get painted in bold palace colors and designs.