Flower Dropper

Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville

For Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville produced at McCarter Theatre, there was a requirement for “Flowers to suddenly appear”. This was accomplished by having magnet-tipped flowers fall onto a sheet of steel that was covered in wood veneer and painted to match the show deck. To give the best performance, the flowers had to fall in a controlled sequence so they would not interact with each other (and become stuck). I accomplished this by building a device that had a series of tubes with doors that could be electronically operated by solenoids connected to a series of MIDI relays. Final operation was controlled using QLab. Scenic design by Dan Ostling.