Obviously in the Disney film production, Beauty escapes from the Beasts castle in an attempt to get back to her father. She ends up lost in the forest and is set upon by vicious wolves.
Just as she is about to become lunch, the Beast shows up and fights them all off and saves Beauty.
I wanted to stick to this simple story line as much as possible as the children would instantly recognise it because of the film, it gels the beginning of their relationship and because I thought it would be great to try and recreate this particular scene live on stage.
I decided that black puppetry was probably the best way forward but making 6 to 8 wolves bodies realistic and operable seemed almost impossible so I threw that piece of paper away and started again.
Finally I decided that just showing their eyes would suffice - and if they were red and evil to boot then that would be fabulous!
I went searching for materials and came across rear bicycle lights - perfect!!
They were about the right size, they were red and battery operated and most importantly they were £1 a pair!
I emptied the rack and set to work...
Firstly I tried tracing paper, then lighting gels of varying colours - different materials and different thicknesses all to try and mask the rectangular shape into an eye shape and to try and diffuse the fact that the light emitted from 3 central individual LEDs.
After many attempts I ended up cutting the shape of an eye out of a strip of black gaffa tape with a craft knife, then placing that over the entire light face.
It was okay but because you could still see all 3 LEDs it still lost the eye shape somewhat.
So I tried covering the LEDs directly to push the over spill light out of the gap, instead of the direct light - this seemed to work so I stuck a thin strip of gaffa across each one.
You can see each step of the process below:
Initially I had expected a blacked-out member of the chorus to be able to operate one pair with each hand but on testing the gaffa elements, it became obvious that that is exactly what it would look like so I then set to work designing an extension they could hold which would have the eyes mounted inside and which could block the lights entirely if necessary, and allow them freer and more unrestricted movement.
A simple box surrounding the lights and deeper than the light box itself seemed the quickest option. The light box backs were secured in place and a 2ft MDF pole was attached to the rear. This now allowed 4 chorus members to operate 8 wolves in total across the whole stage and as an effect was not easy to figure out.
Once all 8 sets had been constructed we tried out the effect on stage - now our only problem was in lighting the lead character (Beauty) without showing the puppeteers behind.
That proved harder than first expected but after several attempts (the video below shows an early trial) I decided to go with her carrying the miniature Lumiere which glowed - she placed one of the glowing candlesticks underneath her chin at all times and this sufficiently lit her face throughout this scene.
Once the Beast entered and the wolves began to withdraw to the rear of the stage we used an ultra violet blue gel on the follow spot to light both characters.
I think the end result worked excellently and just to dot my I's, I asked the puppeteers to lean forward like animals during the scene because any small glimpse of their bodies just looked like the wolves bodies when in this position.
The video doesn't really do it any justice and the camera was struggling with such low light but its enough for you to get the jist 8)
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