Masks for Clive Barker's History of the Devil

For the spring season of 2015 Nearly Naked Theater did a production of Clive Barker's History of the Devil.  There are nearly 30 characters in all in the play but these are played by a cast of maybe 11 actors all together.  The author intended for masks to be used to help the audience distinguish which character an actor is portraying at any given point.  So our biggest job was to create over 20 masks.  For this we got to work with a great product for the first time.  It is called Fosshape and feels and looks like a thick felt.  You can sew it or pin it to the curves and contours you want for the final piece then apply heat with a heat gun or hair dryer.  The fibers are plastic and when heat is applied the material contracts slightly and gains a fairly rigid quality very much like molded felt hats but accomplished easily and quickly by any novice.  Below are some examples of our masks.  I have included images done for publicity purposes for the show for which I will be adding a citation and securing permission for using.

Props, set and costume elements for "Angels in America"

Nearly Naked theater is producing both parts of "Angels in America" to round of its 16th season.  We created a number of elements but by far the most exciting was to create the angel's wings.  They were to operate using a bunraku style puppetry technique with one stage hand on each wing.  Here are some pictures of  the wings in process and a video of the test run on the completed set of articulated angel wings.

Another success for this production was our angel statue that remains on the stage for the entire production and is the center piece for all scenes in central park.  It is of course meant to represent the Bethesda Fountain statue.