Restaurant Aquarium - The Thing About Jellyfish

With Berkeley Repertory Theatre

Designed by: Derek McLane

For a scene in a Chinese restaurant, we were tasked with building an aquarium. It didn’t need to hold water, but it did need to look believable. It also needed to track onstage with automation. I build the base for it, out of plywood and MDF. I then learned how to glue acrylic sheets together using acrylic cement, and attached the tank to the base. The base also needed a lid, which I also made from MDF. Because lighting was installing UV LEDs in the tank lid, I had to make sure it had a snug fit, but could be removed every night to change the batteries.

We went out and bought aquarium decorations, such as gravel, rocks, branches, and plants, to decorate the aquarium. However, an issue I discovered was that the plants wouldn’t stand up without water! I used a mixture of techniques to make them stand: hot gluing grasses together and to the sides of the tank to stiffen them, and I also made a grid of fishing line to hang and marionette the plants to stand up.

The final challenge was to install a “bubbler” effect in the aquarium. I used a real airstone and battery-powered pump, and sealed an acrylic tube and some pipe fittings with silicone. After a few tests, the bubbler was up and running, and we installed it into the aquarium.

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Mold Making

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Sink Base - Welding