Set Design and Construction: Newbie Needs Help Building a cave

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Newbie Needs Help Building a cave

Printed From: Community Theater Green Room
Category: Producing Theater
Forum Name: Set Design and Construction
Forum Discription: Post your questions or suggestions about designing or building a set here.
URL: http://www.communitytheater.org/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=2790
Printed Date: 11/24/24 at 4:02am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 8.05 - http://www.webwizforums.com

Topic: Newbie Needs Help Building a cave

Posted By: rhema33
Subject: Newbie Needs Help Building a cave
Date Posted: 11/06/07 at 11:21am

Has anyone tried to build a cave/solid stone wall? What materials do you recommend, I am trying to build one for our church production. I have thought of spray foam, seen ideas for mixing dry wall compound and Polymer based glue. Has any one tried one of these? Any help or ideas will be greatly appreciated.

Replies:

Posted By: JoeMc
Date Posted: 11/06/07 at 8:34pm

There is a post on stone foam application, under "Fake Brick' though you will have to scroll down a bit.
forum_posts.asp?TID=296 - http://www.communitytheater.org/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=296
Also I'm sure there is some other posts about stone walls & even using preformed plastic blow molded sheets you can purchase.

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[western] Gondawandaland
"Hear the light & see the sound!
TOI TOI CHOOKAS
{may you always play to a full house!}

Posted By: vickifrank
Date Posted: 11/07/07 at 7:17am

There is another method that you may want to consider...You make a rough form of the downstage cave entrance out of cut plywood--make this an irregular shape, not square or rectangular. Make a bigger rough form for the upstage side exit of the cave. Attach the two to two pieces of 2x4 that run on the floor between the two. The entrance and exit don't need to be far spaced, even 2-3 feet apart look fine. You may need to brace the upright entrance and exit. Take chicken wire, bend it to fit over this opening to make a tunnel form but extend the tunnel. Keep your chicken wire rough and bent occassionally to simulate rough rock--even pull sections back from the plane of the cave wall with a pliers to roughen it up. Then cover with primed (medium grey color) fabric strips or rug pieces. Cover the inside a little and outside as far as each will show. If needed-- wire the fabric into place. Or simply pull ends of strips through chicken wire to fasten them. Now with a spray tank spray a splatter of dark grey color. With a sponge or wadded up rage, sponge on light grey paint.

If you want to get fancy, You can put wadded up newspaper over the wire and under the fabric to make realistic individual rocks. You can sponge some moss color in a few places, or brown color in a few places.

Materials: Plywood, some small pieces of 2x4, scrap fabric (cotton muslin or canvas is best) or scraped rug, chicken wire, glue, wire, 3 colors of grey paint, a sponge or rag, scrap newspaper, a garden sprayer. Most of these can be recycled scrap.

Posted By: Charlie328
Date Posted: 11/24/07 at 7:53pm

We used a plaster of paris encrusted cloth over crumpled newspaper for the 3-D effects, then painted it a combo of gray and black for depth, made very realistic rock formations in "Peter Pan" and on fireplace set pieces.

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"TANSTAAFL" (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch)
Heinlein

Posted By: neilfortin
Date Posted: 11/25/07 at 4:25pm

We use plain old sheets of plywood with a comination of plaster/glue soaked cloth and newspaper to create three-d rocks then paint to give depth and value to each one, Although we haven't tried to make something fully naturalistic (were usually doing stone fireplaces, or stone walls that have a pattern of the rocks to them, they come out awesome with this method, it truly is how the paint is applied that gives the rocks their realistic look. Take a look at the attached photo to confirm, this fireplace was done in the way I described, fully out of paper mache, and glue/plaster dipped paper and fabric.

Scroll down and look at "Deathtrap" Jan, 2003

http://campkiwanee.com/drama2.htm - http://campkiwanee.com/drama2.htm

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