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By Krista Layfield, Lilly Theater Manager.
For our set for The Jungle Book, playing in the Lilly Theater March 11–April 15, we decided to create a banyan tree—a crazily growing, visually stunning, native tree of India. To really do this gorgeous tree justice, we observed its characteristics very closely. For instance, we looked at the colors and noticed that it is more of a brownish gray rather than green. Here's a photo we used for inspiration...
We also came up with a plan to create the look of the tree with paint and texture in an assembly line fashion, since we needed to make so much of it in a relatively short time.
- We began by gathering about 60 cardboard tubes of varying lengths, from two feet to 20 feet, and in various diameters from two inches to three feet wide.
- For the tree limbs, we chose a total of five different colors: olive and bright green, two shades of brown in a ginger and grayish beige, as well as a charcoal gray.
- We added saw dust, joint compound, and glue to give the base colors a physical texture and make it look more like tree bark (instead of a smooth cardboard tube.)
- We came up with a checkerboard pattern to apply the base colors and then spattered on the highlight and shadow colors.
- Then, we blended everything together with a texture roller brush, allowing the pattern to mostly disappear while adding depth.
This process allowed us to work quickly, and get finished before the mixture dried.
As we started working, we discovered that we needed to apply the base colors very heavily to make the texture really stand out. We ended up using a wide flat spatula to apply the base color textures and then used the texture roller to create the tree bark look. Since the tubes were round and wanted to roll as we painted them, we built wooden stoppers into saw horses to keep them still. We could only apply the texture to about half of the tube before we could turn it over and paint the other half. This added a lot of time, as it took about a half hour for the paint texture mix to dry.
Overall, it took about three weeks to paint all of the tubes. To add to this, we were very limited on space and didn’t want to get any paint on the Elves and the Shoemaker set while the show was running. We only had the area just upstage of the set and down stage of the star drop, which only gave us a space about 25’ long and 11’ wide. It was a long, hard process, but with a little problemsolving and teamwork, we pulled it off!
Keep an eye out for this extraordinary banyan tree as you take in The Jungle Book this Spring Break!
