I have been volunteered for the play selection committee at small community theater.  Their stage has an 8 ft ceiling,  not much wing space and no trap door possibility. In fact the deck is covered by carpeting. It's a wretched little performance space but it's all they got. Any suggestions on how the KKK trap door scene could be handled?

I reckon I?m as thick as a brick & twice as dense at times! 

But what is a ?KKK trap door??

Would this be something like a ?Priest Hole? or part of a gallows jib?

What ever it is? You could use rostra to give the same effect, by incorporating it into the set in some way!

Apparently, "The Foreigner" by Larry Shue is not a widely produced play in Australia: is that right, Joe?  Clelia is speaking of the trap door which is used in this play which takes place in the Southern US. One of the characters is a fundamentalist preacher who also happens to be in the Ku Klux Klan.

Your right Kathy, I have never heard of the play, but what is the trap door all about?

Is it like the access to a priest hole, used in England to hide the priests, during Cromwells purtian purge against the church of Rome?

So this would be to hide slaves or who ever, from the Ku Klux?s of the Klan?

Actually the trap door is the access to the root cellar. It is very common in older american homes where they had to have cool place to store their food. In the play they keep a barrel of sauerkraut in the root cellar. The funny bit about getting the sauerkraut from the root cellar sets up the premise that it can be accessed from the trap door and also from the outside. Later in the play when the good guys are capturing the bad guys (The Klu Klux Klan) they use the trapdoor to disappear into. It is suppose to be like a ghost dematerializing or the melting of the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz. The play is hilariously funny.

When we did the play we built a thrust to accomodate the trap door. We liked the thrust so much we kept it.

Linda

Buewdy Linda!

I'm now a full bottler!

G'onya!

If you look at Midwestern storm cellars, the access is usually outside, through a door that is built up from the ground at about a 30 degree angle.  Look at the beginning of The Wizard of Oz, or take a look at this picture (but imagine wooden walls instead of built-up dirt):

http://www.answers.com/topic/storm-cellar-jpg - http://www.answers.com/topic/storm-cellar-jpg

No reason something like this couldn't be inside the house.

Oh, and Joe/Gaafa, go out and get the play RIGHT NOW and read it.  Get The Nerd by the same author, while you're at it.  You'll thank me later.

My CT did this play a long time ago.  We actually took it to a theatre festival competition. We actually packed the entire set and travelled four hours to the competition.

 For the disappearing actor, we had a platform with a trap door that opened down.  We had a very ingeneous mechanical engineer as part of our crew and he build a hoist of some kind (hidden under the platform) that lowerd the actor. It was something like those hoist things that your car goes up on when at the garage for repairs but I think it operated on compressed air.  Add dry ice & LX specials and it looks awesome.  I could put you in touch with the fellow who built the hoist.  Send me your email contact in a PM and I can forward it to him.  Can't promise anything.     One thing we did was have as one of the KKK members (some of whom come on stage wearing their hoods) was a black actor.  He loved playing the part and we had great fun watching the audience reaction at curtain call time when the KKK guys removed their hoods.