The goal of this project was to make a self-illuminated boat for the opening of the Tempest. It needs to be sturdy enough to tour, but also needed to match the materials in the rest of the design, which were fairly industrial. We first made patterns of stiff paper to find the shape of the boat.

Here, I’m cutting out the base of the boat in a stiff white plastic. The brown paper keeps it from getting scuffed in transit and also provides a handy thing on which to draw the pattern.

Peeling the paper back you can see the nice glossy surface.

The plastic for the rest of the boat is a matte polycarbonate, so it handles bending beautifully. To get sharp creases, I used my vise like a metal brake, which worked pretty well.

Once I had the basic hull, I started testing light sources. Originally, we were going to use an incandescent bulb, which would also have served as a practical light on stage, but the director decided to free up the actor manipulating the boat and so we had to figure out how to light the boat without the benefit of a power cord.

I’d done another show with self illuminated puppets and had discovered then that a florescent closet light provided the best light. This photo has much more of a hotspot than in real life.

In an effort to get more light and more diffusion, I tested out a piece of mirrored polycarbonate instead of the white plastic.

Oooo! Ghost boat.

The original light was six inches, and here I’m testing out a twelve inch light.

I tried a backing mirror to bounce the light forward. Putting a V of mirror in there really brightened up the boat. Alas, when I got to the final construction, the smokestacks, and observation deck kept the V from being practical.

For the final assembly, I pop riveted the boat together. This is a view of the bottom of the boat as it’s being held in the vise.

Because I was stupid, I didn’t take a picture of the finished boat. Sorry. I’ll get one later.

In this shot, the El wire is lit, but we are under normal room lighting. The red comes from Festive Red Holiday Saran Wrap, which is a bad idea for food products, but makes great intestines.

We put the bubbles on the outside, which really catches the light well and looks all suction cuppy. Gross, huh?

So far my only brainstorms of how to deal with this are not so hot, but maybe they’ll give you an idea.

1) We could have the coils preset under the stage floor and have them rituallistically attached to Ariel in a very sick and dramatic fashion — which totally breaks the idea that she has torn herself apart to become the harpy.

2) I just saw a giant inflatable puppet that Jane Catherine Shaw made. Huge. Twenty feet tall and entirely made of translucent plastic tarp. She had a hose running offstage to a fan, which was pretty quiet. The puppet really got whipped about and appeared to be durable. We could try inflatable tentacles.

Otherwise, I’m at a loss. These things are the size of a human torso.

Erica and I will keep building them tomorrow, just so they have something to rehearse with. I’ll also experiment with the inflatable option, just so you’ve got a choice.

I couldn’t find a clip light, so I stuck two maglights under the boat to check out it’s qualities as a lamp.

Overall my conclusions were:

1. I think want the material to be more opaque, or I want to put a diffusion gel on the lamp.
2. You can’t score this stuff, or it will crack. But, you can bend it and it will hold the crease without breaking
3. Easiest way to have the boat fit under the playboard is to lay it on its side. Having the pieces collapse works, but makes the boat jiggly.

We tried cling wrap to hold the batting in. Not a good plan. It’s easy, because it sticks to itself. Which is bad when you try to move the puppet.