Reading Community Players bring man-eating plant to Berks

The star of the play is a large puppet.

To rent or to create that puppet--- a large plant, named Audrey II--- was a huge conundrum.

Scheduled to open October 18, RCPs production of œLittle Shop of Horrors, presented a unique set of challenges.$0

As theatre folk know, presenting a musical theatre piece is far more expensive than a drama would be. Usually, a drama may cost $75 per performance and an additional $8 for each script.

The Musical Theatre International fee for Little Shop is, roughly, $1600; the sound-track an additional $870.

Then there is the cost of the plants. To rent them from MTI would cost between $2100 and $2600.

œImagine our excitement, then, announces their Reading Community Players press release, œwhen Matt Thomas and Ben Ruth offered to build our œAudrey puppets for far less than that!! And, RCP will own the puppets, so we'll be able to rent them to others at a significant discount!

Thomas and Ruth had this to say about creating Audrey II: "We looked at online examples of previous constructed props from other productions of "Little shop of Horrors" as well as the motion picture. We spent a whole week redesigning it to work with lighter, flexible and much more affordable materials easily found locally".

$0It took them from mid-June to the end of August working together a couple evenings a week to complete the job.

To be specific Matt estimated it took close to 95 hours to complete everything with the internal mechanisms and accessories.

Here are some progressive pictures of the process. It may look simple in a picture, but until you come see them in action in the show you cant really appreciate the magic that goes into creating something like this.

Ruth began doing special effects in 2010 when he made himself up to go see a Batman movie.

Later he learned to use an air brush and continued on doing more complicated faces since then.

He is self-taught and has continued to learn from expert "how to" videos.

Ruth made the faces for "Evil Dead the Musical" and his own Boris Karloff makeup in "Arsenic and old lace" both shows at RCP, and FX makeup for "Bat Boy the Musical" and "Refer Madness" for Genesius theater.

Ruth also is an actor, costumer and makeup artist the last few years at Dorney Park & Wildwater kingdom.$0

Thomas is owner of M F Thomas Enterprises LLC

He has been doing FX makeup since 1987, self-taught until graduating from the Joe Blasco Makeup center in Orlando Fla 1996.

He has been a free-lance professional FX artist since graduating, working for nearly every community, regional, and high school theater from Philadelphia to Harrisburg.

A 26 year local veteran of countless productions for theater, Film and Television, Thomas admits that neither he nor Ruth has ever worked on anything this big before or involving puppetry, which is what made them jump at the challenge.

$0Each approached the theater with the idea of making Audrey II instead of renting, but was unsure if they could get them created in time¦ until they teamed up on the project.

For tickets, go to www.readingcommunityplayers.com