fake wall

[Prodman22]

Hi

 

We will be putting on a production where the director has indicated that she wants a boulder dash wall about 3m in height by about 3.5m wide where towards the end of the play an actor knocks down the wall from the rear and comes crashing through. The wall has to collapse easily every night and be rebuilt every day and also has to be safe but at the same time looking either like a dry-stone wall or a brick wall.

I'm not sure where to begin here, I work in a school so we have limited budget. I'm thinking Styrofoam and making bricks ?

[Dave m]

yup.

 

consider fire risks but builders merchants sell huge sheets of thick polystyrene .

 

you only need cut the bricks where the hole will appear.

 

also look up Vacform

 

http://www.atozscenery.co.uk/catalogue.php?category=Gallery

[Tregilibob]

Kingspan type roof/wall insulation is lovely to sand and carve (very dusty but doesn't crack easily) if you need actual boulders rather than straight line bricks.

[dbuckley]

Can you make bricks (or brick sections) out of cardboard boxes? They are cheap, easy to build, can be knocked down nightly and rebuilt, and don't get damaged, and if somehow you do damage one spares are easy to arrange.

[IJWesley]

I built this effect for Dames At Sea. We used copy paper boxes (the ones that hold 5 reams). After a bit of trial and error, we found that using the same brand was essential, as was alternating the boxes with the lids up and down. Finally, we glued some of the boxes into giant tetris shapes so that we had a mix of sizes. Make sure you label everything, and you can rebuild very quickly.

 

Ian

 

Forgot to add - we built a simple wooden frame to hold the boxes. The frame very slightly too small so that the wall was held in compression. When the actor pushed the wall, it "exploded" outwards rather than just toppling like a tower of lego.