The Old Carriage! (A large, weight-bearing wagon)

This is a local community theatre "stock" prop that I have used several times over the years. It is a period wagon that was made of sturdy welded steel about 20 years ago. It originally was the "Surrey With a Fringe on Top" for a community production of "Oklahoma!" But over the years it has been converted to Tevye's cart for "Fiddler on the Roof", the pumpkin coach for "Cinderella", the "Wells Fargo Wagon" for "Music Man", and the runaway cart for "Les Miserables". So this old prop will surely live on to make many more appearances in our shows! To rent it, you can find the Triad Sceneshop link below. Click my photos to enlarge them:
Above, you can see the carriage as I converted it into the runaway cart for our 2008 production of "Les Miserables The School Edition". This is after the lights come up and Valjean lifts the front wheel to save the man. For this period look, I fabricated a fake driver's seat and a dozen burlap bags filled with lightweight styrofoam packing peanuts!

But the cart entered the stage in darkness. First, I had the crew quickly push it out onto the rotating electric turntable. Then the scene was lit with only strobe lights, so it gave the illusion that the cart was rolling. You can see the actor falling under the front wheel of the cart, which is actually standing still on the rapidly rotating turntable. The "rolling" effect was stunning to the audience.

Below is that same carriage in another one of our plays. This is my pumpkin coach for our 2003 middle school production of "Cinderella" the musical. I got some flexible PVC plumbing pipe and fashioned a fragmentary/suggestive pumpkin on top. (The castle drop is from KENMARK).
*The bare carriage frame can be rented locally at the Triad Sceneshop. See it at the bottom of their "props" file: http://picasaweb.google.com/TriadStageSceneShop