Prop: Tumbleweed
Appearing in: Redmoon Theater’s “Winter Pageant”
Since Redmoon Theater’s 12th annual Winter Pageant is called “The Ballad of Lonesome Pete,” director Frank Maugeri envisioned an efficient way to evoke a musical western atmosphere. “I wanted a really quick moment at the top of the show that was an overly sincere, iconic introduction to the West,” he says, “because the goal of the pageant is to create an abundance of sweet, ethereal images.”
If this was the lonesome cowboy’s world, then the tumbleweed had to be part of it. Artistic engineer David Christopher “Big” Krause drew a design for twigs covering a rubber ball with a remote-control vehicle inside to drive the prop. But it stayed on the drawing board because creating a prop that moved mysteriously on its own was too costly for the show’s shoestring budget.
Then art department director Laura Miracle tried to make tumbleweeds by putting strips of papier mache over a ball, but the finished object wasn’t right. “It was too solid and didn’t have the lacy quality of tumbleweed,” Miracle says.
But her basic concept was a keeper, so the next time she cut rope sections in three different diameters, soaked them in glue and wrapped them around two beach balls. When the glue dried, she punctured the balls, squeezed them out and filled the interior of the sphere with more glue-soaked rope. “I used natural fiber ropes, which have a certain kink or curl to them like human hair and lend themselves to making objects from nature,” Miracle says. “Nylon or synthetic rope is too silky.”
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Then Krause found a way to make the tumbleweeds drift across the stage. He bought an old-fashioned push lawnmower on eBay and someone donated a second one. He put an axle through each ball of rope, attached it to a long arm connected to the lawnmowers so that the tumbleweed hung down about six inches out in front of the twirling blades. “The tumbleweed is ball-shaped and rolls around beautifully,” Krause says, “and as the performers try to mow it down, it tumbles away.”
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Winter Pageant, through Jan. 11, Redmoon Central, 1463 W. Hubbard St., $5-$15; 312-850-8440.