Where have you been for the past year?
Why hello there! It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Well, it’s been a busy year, in no small part thanks to the Caltech production of Little Shop of Horrors. The centerpiece of the show, the most difficult and trying project for us, was the design and build of the titular horror, Audrey II.
With only a month and a half to build the plant, and minimal staff until the weekend before the show, this was never going to be an easy task. And adding to the difficulty was the lack of instructions. Sure, we leased the play from MTI and they included a “How To Audrey 2” booklet, but the instructions in the book were minimal at best, and injuriously incompetent at worst. One suggestion was to have the support for the 80+ lb final puppet rest on the neck of the puppeteer! No thank you. The Internet at large had no shortage of examples of Audrey II in all its forms:
But there's no indication of how to build them.
So for posterity, I present to you the (Un)Official Caltech Guide to Building Audrey II.
Disclaimer: There are constraints here. We only had a month and a half to build it, and a month and a quarter of that we only had four people working on it primarily. If you have a larger workforce or more time, you can get more done.
We also had at our disposal the assistance of an experienced welder to help construct the largest puppets, and if you’re using this as a how-to guide, I understand that you may not have similar skilled labor available. Hopefully you’ll still find some of this useful.
Disclaimer part deux: This guide is specifically about all of the plant’s capabilities. Of course there’s spoilers about the play.
Audrey II appears in 4 forms throughout the play, with additional plant forms onstage during the finale.
Pod 1
Pod 1 comes onstage after Skid Row and stays on stage through Grow For Me. It's gotta look unhealthy, then display a healthy bloodlust to Seymour. Pod 1 is a simple hand puppet operated by a hidden puppeteer.
Pod 2
Pod 2 is onstage only during Ya Never Know. This one has to turn about and playfully nip at the girls. Also a simple hand puppet, this one is unique in that it is the only puppet not operated by the main puppeteer, but by the actor playing Seymour.
Pod 3
Pod 3 comes on during Closed for Renovation and stays onstage through the end of the first act. This one has to sing and dance (and eat some entrails). Pod 3 is still a simple puppet, but big enough it fits the puppeteer’s full body inside it.
Pod 4
Pod 4 is onstage through all of Act 2. This one also has to sing and move, as well as eat people whole. It is a gigantic puppet, requiring the puppeteer to operate each jaw with a great deal of deliberation. During Sominex/Suppertime II, Audrey II must grasp Audrey 1 with its root/branch
Blooms
The Blooms. Spoiler Alert: The plant wins. In the end, the characters who were eaten come back with plant accouterments to deliver a final warning (ignore it). As a bonus, our Blooms could open and close the pods on their heads (a little bit), and the actors controlled Audrey II’s tremendous root graspers.
Cuttings
The Cuttings are little Audrey II’s that the girls cut off of the big Audrey II during the finale. They don't do anything but look cute (the plants, I mean).
Now you know what you're in for. I'll join you next time, where we actually start building these bad boys. Yes, this could have been Part 1, but I think it's easier to have Part numbers correspond to Pod numbers
Part 0: Introuduction
