Noah's ark saved two of each animal from the biblical flood.
A musical play based upon the Noah's Ark bible story is an engaging way of bringing the tale to life. The tale centers on an enormous ship known as the ark, which Noah used to save a pair of each species of animal on earth to save them from the great flood. Noah sent out a dove to find evidence of land, which they then sailed toward. When the floodwaters receded, the animals left the ark and repopulated the Earth.
Instructions
1. Determine the size of your ark. Take into account how many people will be on the deck of the ark at any one time -- in order to be safe, each actor will need 2 square feet of space to themselves -- and how big your performance area will be.
2. Use the metal L-brackets to attach the three 4-foot wooden boards to the 2-foot wooden boards. Use three brackets for each pair of boards to ensure a sturdy fit. Each pair of boards should now stand freely.
3. Use a carpenter's pencil to draw the outline of the ark onto the wooden boards and then begin to fill in plank detail. Paint the ark part of the boards in brown, filling in any detail with other paints later. The parts of the boards which aren't covered by boat should be painted light blue, representing the sky behind the boat.
4. Use the blue acrylic paint to paint waves onto one of the long sides of each sheet of transparent plastic. These waves should be about two feet high to represent rising water. Once all the paint has dried on the wood and on the plastic, lay the plastic sheets against the wood so that the waves are on the bottom and fold the extra six inches of the plastic sheets over the top of the wooden boards. Tack them into place with the hammer and tacks.
5. Place stage boxes in the performance area and interlock them securely to create a performance area with two stage levels. Medium sized stage boxes are 1 foot by 1.5 feet by 1.5 feet, so how many boxes you use depends on the size of ark you want to build.
6. Continue to lock the boxes together until the second level of the performance area is of a satisfactory size. This second level represents the deck of the ark. Add stairs to the left- and right-hand sides of the ark as well as at the back of the deck of the ark. This can be constructed either during the intermission by stage hands or can be incorporated into the play itself, for example, during a scene about Noah and his family building the ark.
7. Employ stage hands to quickly run the three wooden boards onto the stage directly in front of the stage boxes and push the three boards together to represent the ark before the deluge. Actors playing the animals and passengers on the ark can then be led up the steps on the left and right of the stage to populate the ark. To make more room, animals can be led down the back stairs "into the space within the ark", when really they are led behind a curtain and into the wings.
8. At the point in the play when the flood waters begin to rise and the ark is at sea, the acetate sheets will be flipped over the top of the wooden boards to represent waves. This can be done surreptitiously by the actors near the front of the ark.
Tags: wooden boards, performance area, stage boxes, over wooden, over wooden boards, pair boards, plastic sheets