The McLeod Summer Playhouse kick’s off its summer season on Saturday June 6th with a production of Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach.
The play is intended for a young audience and will offer some audience participation.
For the last few weeks a lot of noise has been coming from the Moe Laboratory in the SIU Communications building.
Crews have been building the set for the upcoming performance of James and the Giant Peach.
There’s a lot of passion going into it, everyone’s really excited about it.
Set designer Kerry Lee Chipman had one of the biggest challenges.
“It’s James and the Giant Peach so the peach is really the most difficult element to kind of just make sure it can do everything we needed it to do.”
“This peach is the size of my apartment.”
Having “giant peach” in the title means it’s going to be a big part of the story.
“It’s a little bit tricky because we have to see the peach from the outside, we see it from the inside, we see it when it’s just a peach pit.”
Lead carpenter Hannah Allgeier has been working on the set for a couple of weeks. She says it was quite a challenge to build a peach that is over 8 foot high.
“I’m use to building platforms and flats and those kind of things, I don’t really deal with revolves or building a giant peach.”
Play director Wes Drummond says another obstacle is meeting the expectations of the audience…
“I think it is a visually stunning show that’s going to be really exciting.
…without the use of Hollywood magic.
“We have to do the same amount of magic but right in front of an audience”
Some of that magic involves using the audience in parts of the performance like knocking on doors or controlling the water.
“There’s a lot of cool surprises where the kids are interacting with the actors but I don’t want to give them all away.”
James and the Giant Peach will have 9 performances on Wednesday’s at 10am and Saturday’s at 2pm through July 18.
For a look at how the peach is made click here.
