A second-year theater student designed a puppet that can swallow actors whole for Theatre AACC’s spring production of “Little Shop of Horrors.”
Gabby Bly, the assistant set designer for “Little Shop,” used PVC pipe, chicken wire and papier mache to create the massive Audrey II puppet, an alien plant that eats humans in the show.
“I wanted it to be different than every other production that’s ever done ‘Little Shop,’” Bly, who plans to earn a production design certificate from AACC, said. “So she has a mohawk and she has lots of spikes and she’s purple and green, and she’s got personality.”
Bly and the set design team created four different Audrey II puppets for the show, starting with a small hand puppet and then larger versions to represent the plant as it grows. The largest Audrey takes six puppeteers to control.
“I’ve always been into building worlds and, you know, creating backdrops and stuff, but I don’t think I’ve ever made anything that was made to move or eat people before,” Bly said. It “has to be sturdy enough to be handled and sturdy enough to eat people.”
Head puppeteer Erik Binnix, a third-year engineering and mathematics student, said the puppeteers have “developed a unique chemistry” while working together on Audrey II.
“It is quite the mechanism and [a] dance and coordination of a whole bunch of different elements,” Binnix said. “If you want to count the vines and everything, [it’s] like a whole six-person contraption.”
Set designer Sean Urbantke said Theatre AACC has made large monsters for shows before, but never this detailed.
“This is much more of a puppet that is supposed to feel like it’s alive and real,” Urbantke said. “It’s supposed to feel like it’s an actual plant that’s there and eating the performer in front of you.”
Puppeteer Robin Whe-well, a second-year theater student, said controlling the “puppet with other people” is a great experience.
Third-year theater student Daniel Wade, one of the puppeteers for Audrey II, said it’s a “challenge” to control the complicated puppet.
“It’s a bit different [from] theater, when you’re acting as a person,” Wade said. “It’s interesting to … have to take blocking notes and apply it to inanimate objects.”
