The Glory Man

This is the final stage set-up for a play we attended last night at the Lamb's Players Theatre in Coronado (San Diego), California. Here is before the play begins set-up. Note in blipfoto the missing square and triangular sections in the stage floor compared to the Flickr foto.

It was the World Premier of "The Glory Man" by Dennis Hassell. This means that that Lamb's Players Theatre is the first theater to show this play anywhere in the world.
It is the story about Clarence Jordan; his Gospel Patch translation of the Bible and his vision for removing racial strife by integration of black and white people in the U.S. South.
(Aside note here: Lamb's Players Theatre also did the play based on Jordan's Gospel Patch Gospel)
The play tells the story of the people who lived and worked at the communal Koinonia Farm, their various backgrounds, the challenges they faced from the local community, and how they dealt with these issues.
The final act is about the meeting of Clarence Jordan and Millard Fuller (scroll down to Millard); how they created the idea of low-cost housing for very poor people. After the untimely death of Clarence Jordan, Millard Fuller finished organizing their beginning housing project into the now well known Habitat for Humanity. .

The play had 17 actors (some of whom played more than one character) and a FANTASTIC set arrangement. They always have fantastic sets at this theater! The people who design and build them, IMHO (in my humble opinion) are geniuses! The two requirements I have noticed over the years are: less is more dramatic, and make the set props multi-task. They did that again for this play, with farm crates serving as a witness chair at a jury, benches serving as pews in a church, the barn doors actually slid back and forth as walls for different scenes, the stair landing slid as well, forming a church pulpit and part of a courthouse.

What you are looking at is the mock first house they made. It was "constructed" right on stage, even as the characters were speaking their lines.
First they "plucked" the square wall sections out of the lower stage front left and front right floors. (I watched and saw they hooked bracing bars to the upper stage "barn loft" area and the wall units, to keep those pieces from shifting).
Then they 'plucked' the two triangular 'roof" sections from center stage and moved them to form the roof as you see it, but before they attached the multiple hooks on rope hoists they slid a long metal bar along the backside of the pieces for stability. After it was hoisted above the square wall units they dropped large wooden "pins" into the connecting pieces to keep them in place.
The whole "house structure' was set up in FIVE minutes!

The whole evening was very enjoyable. First a well written historical and social commentary play, and of course the typical set magic that is so characteristic of Lamb's Players Theatre .
If you get a chance to visit San Diego, try to attend one of their plays (they are opened year round and even have special Christmastime events) by driving over the Coronado Bridge. If you can't make it this far, see if your local theater group might be interested in presenting the play. It's quite good!