It is SO important to create a special moment for the Transformation. Some clients do it with lighting or by incorporating a clever element to their stage design. How did you do the Transformation and was it effective?
Heartland Costumes
Beauty and the Beast and Little Mermaid Costumes
We had a fireplace in our castle. The inside of the fireplace was able to spin. So the Beast (Double) collapsed in front of the fireplace and Belle (with her cape on) fell to her knees beside him. Upon his ‘death’, she draped herself over him crying. As the lighting drew the audience’s attention to the Enchanted Rose dropping its last petal, the Beast Double rolled into the fireplace, it spun around with the Prince loaded on the backside. He rolled into place…Belle draped over him. Lighting came back to the couple and the Prince arose transformed!
amazing idea! thank you for posting this!
The transformation was amazing. We had only rehearsed it a few times prior to opening night. We had this enormous large turret (West Wing) with the Beast in it, it was spun around and our Stage Manager and Asst. Stage Manager were ready in the wings with baby wipes and clothing for the change….took less than one minute…our Beast and Prince were the same actor.
We took the simple route, but it worked marvelously well, based on audience reaction. we used a simple trap door that dropped away from underneath. As Belle wept and covered our beast double with her cloak, we dropped the trapdoor and “used” the collapse of the heap under belle’s cloak (he rolled one-half turn in to the trapdoor hole) as a suggestion that beast had evaporated! Belle’s reaction was key, as she clearly recognized the collapse of the cloaked body. A small shot of fog from underneath the door accentuated this effect, and our prince nearly immediately began a slow re-growth of the heap under the cloak. We actually had to extend this re-growth to cover the length of the music running. When our prince finally stood up and removed the cloak the audience really, really bought it!.