HOW A STAGE OCEAN IS MADE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VII, Issue 1960, 9 April 1885, Page 2

HOW A STAGE OCEAN IS MADE.

The ocean of the stage is produced by a number of boys lying on their backs beneath a dark cloth and working ravay witlv their legs and arms. Mr Percy Fitzgerald mentions a clever instance of stage illusion in a play called ' The sea of Ice.' A woman with her child on a frozen sea, is exposed to the treachery of the villain of the story, It is a wild Arctic picture, presently the ice begins to break up, and after a time the woman and her infant are floating on a block of ice in the midst of a rolling sea. The effect was produced in the simplest way. ' Strips of whitened canvas were drawn away ti jj&. right and left, revealing water undeni'i ffl; which was represented by sheets 'of perfectly black bombazine, not green or blue, as might be expected. The effect on the audience was entirely owing to the contrast with the glaring white ice, whioh the artist knew caused the waters below to look of an inky hue, Jfc resul was founded on ooular illusion,^!therefore on true scenio principles,' There were the boys at work, of course,. under the oloth, and the iooberg on which the fugitives floated away was a wooden platform, that was drawn off through a slit in the bombazine ocean, Real water has never been found to look so real on the stasje as its artistic i initiation, We remember a story of thelow comedian who carried under his arm a bogus pig and squeijked himself. A rival tried the real thing but it was not so' effective; the squeak did not seem so natural tq the' audience w the imitation,