Broadneck Elementary School was performing “Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka Jr.” and one of the scenes takes place in the Nut Room “where squirrels sort good nuts from bad nuts.” The nuts had to be fairly large, since these squirrels would be kid-sized (and the audience wouldn’t be able to see them otherwise). The nuts are glued layers of two inch rigid foam carved into a rough nut shape. I started with squares and glued them into cubes because it was quick to cut and assemble. That left me with a lot of foam to carve, which was slow and painful. Lesson learned. I used a cartoon image as inspiration and simply painted on the grooves. I figured if a future show needed a bunch of rocks or something, they could be repainted.
They also needed a Nut Scale to evaluate the nuts and to identify Veruca as a “bad nut” at the end of her song. Because she’d be standing on the scale, the indicator had to be pretty tall. I made it wide enough for a crew member to hide behind it to work the dial. I wanted the scale to be all pictures and smiling and frowning emojis seemed appropriate for a 2019 audience.
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