Success. (February 2014). Giant Monopoly Board.

The Backstage Team created a Giant Monopoly Board for the play Success. It featured throughout the whole production as it was screwed down to the Theatre floor during the production, this was to make it safe and secure and stop the individual sections that made it up, from moving, it also was done to stop the Actors from tripping over it.

(How the Giant Monopoly Board looked on stage and during the show).

The board was made in several sections and the pictures on the board were hand drawn and I had bought in an actual monopoly board so it could be copied as the enlarged photocopies that had been printed off had lost some detail.

(Stages of the Giant Monopoly Board being drawn and painted).

 

 The writing on the board was scaled up in size and printed on white paper and eventually pasted down in the appropriate section after the rest of the board had been painted.
I was not really involved in the creating of the Monopoly Board but towards the end when the Place Names were pasted on I was asked to help with the finishing touches.
The whole Monopoly Board had been painted green, as is the colour on the original board but obviously when the Place Names were pasted on, which was printed on white paper, this now made the board look unfinished. The Place Names were printed onto white paper as the college did not have green paper in the size required for the photocopy. For the college to of ordered in the correct colour it would of had to of ordered a quantity something like 2000 sheets and we only needed about 40 sheets printed off. The Tutor did not think that we could warrant that expense to the department as the extra green sheets would have no immediate use to anybody, so it was decided that the white surround to each word would be painted green to match the Monopoly Board. That is where I came in!! Before I was asked to help out the Tutor plus a student had tried painting around each individual letter but that was proving time consuming and not that accurate around the edge of the letters. The Tutor than had the idea of dipping a sponge in the green paint, wiping it fully across each word, thus covering the black lettering, then with a damp cloth and working quickly, wiping away the paint from each individual letter. This was also time consuming and fiddly I must admit but did give overall a much better effect.

(Me painting the white background of the lettering).

 

 You was still able to see the word below the paint thus allowing you to know where to wipe but you did have to be careful as if your cloth was too wet and you wiped too hard it was possible that you tore the paper, which I did do slightly on one when I first took this task over. I soon got the hang of it but must admit I did not enjoy this task. It was fiddly and time consuming and frustrating at times but when it was completed it did give me the sense of satisfaction as the finished task did finish the whole complete look of the project.
 I did end up working alone whilst doing this as we were rapidly running out of time to get everything for the 2 Productions completed and the Tutor needed to be elsewhere and the other student that was originally painting the white to green went on to pasting the rest of the name places down on the board. This did mean I had to be extra careful whilst painting and wiping as some of the place names were still wet from the pasting. We didn't have enough time to allow the newly pasted on names to dry as the board needed to be put in position in the Theatre and screwed down for the first performance the following day.

(The Giant Monopoly Board in position and experimenting with the lighting).