Back to Fairy Tales on the Mars Frontier
The pigs domes would be placed in these positions:
Pig 1: In front of Grandma; Pig 2: Opposite side of stage;
Pig 3: Mid rear stage.
3 Pigs wear at minimum pig noses (costume store), childish clothes like brightly colored overall shorts or dresses. Curly tails are trickier, see wolf’s tail on next page.
Tip: make easy elf or small animal ears by folding the actor’s ear to a point and tape with short piece of Scotch tape. Looks real and doesn’t hurt or damage the ear to my experience, but get parents’ permission. It might cause a permanent crease if the kid wears it to bed.
Ma Pig wears dress or apron (really funny if played by a boy in a bad wig).
Commune Pigs wear drab overalls (identical if possible), maybe with Pig Solidarity symbol.
THE WEATHER WOLF
Remember, the Weather Wolf represents the weather more than a wolf, just as Mother Earth and Mother Nature represent Earth and nature more than a stereotypical mother. The Wolf’s costume could include accents of rain, fire, ice, etc. The wolf could wear a body suit with a weather pattern and a cape and big boots. Female villains seem especially wicked to me, and a female wolf could wear long fingernails, weather symbol earrings and jewelry, shocking make-up and high heeled boots.
Wolf’s Tail: bend hangar as shown, tape on rubber black hose, cut fabric and fold edge over and sew a seam so rubber hose can slide inside, affix with tape, glue or staple. Slide bottom ends of hangar into back pants pockets and put a few stitches in to hold it. Wear pants under gown or cape.
TECHIES ACTING OUT THE WEATHER
Weather: Techies act out the weather, designated by alphabet letter, A, D or G. Change or add more letters if you have more than 3 techies. Actions can be simple or elaborate, but must be on time.
page 3: “The Wolf leaped astride a passing storm (A)…” (techie A runs past twirling or wearing a mass of shredded black and silver material, Wolf runs alongside then stops and A continues offstage )
“He rode a sliding ice floe (D)…” (techie D runs along dragging, or wearing and dragging, a bridal train or white stiff piece of fabric, again Wolf runs alongside, stops and techie exits. Wolf should be at rear of audience by now.)
“He rode an updraft” (Wolf runs up audience aisle back to stage) “up over 16 miles high to the top of Olympus Mons” (techie G wearing a brown blanket or carrying a cardboard mountain erects mountain in front of him. Not in script, but another techie should set a chair behind mountain for Wolf to stand on.
“He plucked out his eyes (A) and hurled them into orbit” (techie A has fake eyeballs on a rod on a string that he swings around. Wolf bends over pretending to pull out eyes, A stands up and swings, Wolf keeps eyes closed looking round blindly as eyes orbit, then bends over pretending to put eyes back in.)
“The Wolf drew in a breath full of sand” (techie D has fake small rocks at the ends of 2 foot length of string on the end of a short rod that she swings around causing them to move as described.
page 4 “inhaling a lung full of rocks” (same thing adding another rod of medium rocks)
page 5 “Boulders roll up hill” (bigger fake rocks just on strings) (see page 4 for rock descriptions)
“twisting up into a huge tornado” (practice all these spinning rocks on strings so they don’t get tangled)
“The wolf breathed out fire” (use heat costume from Rock Song, techie runs around dome swishing costume)
“bringing floods” (use rivers blue fabric trails from Rock Song, techie runs around dome )
“The Wolf breathed out snow storms..” (use ice floe costume from earlier in script, run around dome.)
“For hours the tornado raged” (smack dome and pigs with rocks on strings, flash lights, make sound effects into echo microphone or shake piece of flexible sheet metal, pigs shake dome and squeal.)
THE PURPLE FUNGUS
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The purple fungus can be played by the Piper if you don’t have enough actors. She would do a quick costume change in between. If so, hide her face as the fungus or it might look like the piper goes around planting fungi and then showing up to rescue the town and take their money.
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Purple lights should go on as white lights go off as fungus spreads, then the reverse as Piper kills the fungus. Remember blue and red light do not make purple light. White light is all the colors mixed together so mixing colors just gets you closer to white light. To get purple light you need purple light bulbs (which are hard to find over 40 watts) or purple Christmas lights, or purple gels which you can get from theaters, theater supply stores or public access television facilities (offer to credit them in your program.)
<--The Piper’s space ship: just about anything that she can run with will work.
Try getting a long box and cutting it in half lengthwise along the corners, cut a hole like a kayak. Add fins, tubes for rockets, wings, etc.
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ROCKS
Making rocks: Big rocks can be made by cutting big chunks of Styrofoam and then spray painting them. If you don’t have big solid Styrofoam, get some of those shaped pieces of Styrofoam used to fit around products in boxes and then cover with paper mache’.
Smaller rocks: tie string to a core (empty spool, metal nut, whatever) and form the rock around the core with the string extending out. Cover with aluminum foil, or paper mache’. Do not use Styrofoam for smaller rocks or they will have so little weight that you can’t spin them on the strings.
Put small rocks on a rod, but not large rocks.
Remember, Mars rocks are reddish brown because of all the oxides in them (that’s why we can get oxygen out of them.)
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The Man Who Crushed the Rock
This guy represents the first humans to reach Mars and start terraforming. He needs to wear something representing a pressure suit (Mars has 1% the air pressure of Earth) and an oxygen mask.
Simplest costume is a pair of coveralls, boots and gloves spray painted to look metallic or plastic. Experiment with an undercoat of white or black and an overcoat of silver spray paint.
Added details: Add on a stripe or insignia, take a cereal box and glue small lids and caps on it for buttons, paint it and attach it to his chest for a control panel.
Oxygen cap: get one of those novelty caps sold at football games with the can holders on the sides and the tubes leading to the mouth. Put in clear empty water bottles labeled “O2” for oxygen. Man holds tube in mouth.
Or a Helmet: If you can’t get the novelty cap, he could wear a motorcycle or football helmet and have oxygen bottles hanging on his chest with a tube to the helmet.
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THE ROCK SONG
The Rock Song should be building up a nice front stage display of the rock, man, dome, furnace, factory, micro-organisms, water, settlers, plants and finally the children, with everyone on stage to holler the final line.
Mother and Father would wear similar overalls but live in a time when only an oxygen mask & goggles was necessary to go outside. You could skip the mask, but an O2 bottle with a tube to a dust mask, on their chest would be a nice touch.
