From the vault: Don’t Try This at Home
From the Jesus Christ Superstar Blog, 4/29/03. I got to dust off my welding chops for this show and decided to give folks (i.e. the cast) a glimpse of what was going on behind the scenes:
More on set-building: The look that Christopher is going for is very urban, very gritty, very much in need of “a paint job and a @!#$load of screen doors.” (Had to work my favorite line from Die Hard in there somewhere) Rubble. Gaping holes in walls. Scaffolding. Building implements and materials strewn about. But is something being torn down, or is something new being built?
As I mentioned before, we’re doing this one out of steel. This moves the set construction wing of RMT in a radically new direction. Steel has some distinct advantages: it’s durable, thinner, and the resulting platforms and flats will be more modular, allowing for dozens of uses. It’s also heavier than blazes, but really not much more than a wood platform built to hold a bunch of actors. Plus we get to christen a new arc welder, literally play with fire, and toy around with enough amps to push a couple of Metro cars from here to Silver Spring. Hah! No more worrying about cutting your hand off with a chop saw! Now an “oops!” moment will melt the fillings right out of your teeth and leave you twitching and drooling on the floor.
Hate sawdust? Bah! Sawdust is for babies. You can just brush sawdust out of your clothes. Do the same thing with steel shavings and you’ll end up with a hand full of steel splinters. They’re sharper than wood splinters and run deeper. Better keep the Bactine, razor blades, and Neosporin handy. There are also some interesting physiological changes that come along with working in a steel shop. Hang around in an enclosed space with grinders and steel cutting blades running non-stop and it’ll turn your boogers black. Other side effects include: seeing spots for days, temporary hearling loss, and, for those who like to hotdog it and weld without leathers, a comically red sunburn.
And nothing is more fun that having a white-hot piece of slag drop inside your welding clothes. Just go ahead and bite through your tongue, ‘cuz if you brush it away before it cools you’re only going to smear it over a larger area. Word of warning - if you happen to have a piece drop into your welding helmet, do NOT tip your head backwards to let it roll out. It will invariably roll right out of the helmet and right down the front of your shirt.
But of course nothing like that will happen on JCS, because we’re all pros. We do this kind of thing all the time. We’re seasoned vets in the war of man vs. building supplies. It’s in the bag.
