SCENERY

[Illustration:  Diagram showing the arrangement of screens for simplified staging of “Why the Chimes Rang.”]

SCENERY.

For the sake of facing the most difficult form of the problem of amateur staging, let us suppose that this play is to be given in a parlor or hall, without platform, without proscenium arch or curtains, with the walls, floor and ceiling of such material and finish that no nails may be driven into them, and that the depth of the stage is only nine feet.  It looks hopeless but it can be done.

Under such conditions the only possible form of scenery is the screen.  If the “scenery-man” is a bit of a carpenter, he can build the screens himself, making them as strong and as light as possible, with four leaves a few inches shorter than the height of the room in which they are to be used, and proportionately wide.—­The framework should be braced by cross pieces in the middle of each leaf, and should have stout leather handles nailed to them for convenience in lifting the screen.  The right side should be covered with canvas such as is used for scenery, and the screens can then be easily repainted or recovered for later plays.

If it is not possible to have the screens made to order, ordinary Japanese screens may be borrowed or rented, and made to serve as front curtain, and framework for scenery.

Those indicated in the plan as A A and B B serve as the front curtains, the center sections (marked B B) being drawn aside by persons stationed behind them to show the interior of the hut when the play begins.  The four screens marked C D and E E form the walls of the hut.  In using screens it will be necessary to do without the window and the actual door unless the person in charge of the scenery is clever enough to paint in a window on one panel of the screen and make a door in another.  If not, turn the end panel of the screen marked C to run at right angles with the other part, giving the impression of a passage with an imagined door at the unseen end, and wherever in the business of the parts, the children are said to look out of the window, let them instead look down this passage, as though they were looking through the open doorway.

On the right side of the room in the screen marked D, a fire-place may be constructed by cutting away a portion of the screen to suggest the line of the fire-place, putting back of this opening a box painted black inside to represent the blackened chimney, and finishing with a rough mantel stained brown to match the wall tint.  Of course if the screens are borrowed the fire-place will have to be dispensed with.