Backstage with

Dan Wehner

Dan Wehner heads the Set Sculpture department of Bühnenservice Berlin, the stage-props production workshop. Tasked recently with making a horse for WOZZECK, Wehner came up with a new way of creating the coat. Here he reveals whether his solution worked.

Dan Wehner
Foto:
 

Dan Wehner, head of Set Sculptures at Bühnenservice Berlin

© Dan Wehner

We taped off the parts of the horse where we didn’t want hair: the hooves, tail, mane. We blasted the fibres from a distance – which could have been a rather dusty operation, although in the end wasn’t. That said, the enclosed booth still served a purpose: it meant our colleague could work in peace.

 

 © Dan Wehner

These are pots containing different-coloured hair material. We use different colours so the pelt looks lifelike, because a horse isn’t the same colour from top to bottom. The inner hairs are lighter, the outer hairs darker. Around the hooves they’re virtually black, around the nostrils they’re grey.

 

© Dan Wehner

This is my co-worker, Esther Jansen, beside the horse. She’s holding the device that applies the hair. The fibres are propelled through the nozzle and then given an electrostatic charge. That way we can make the hairs stand up or apply them more densely to create whorls.

 

Töpfe mit Kleber © Dan Wehner

We tested a number of adhesives because they vary in strength and drying times. The glue has to be strong because the horse doesn’t just stand there onstage. Burkhard Ulrich, who plays the Captain in WOZZECK, spends his time onstage either mounted or climbing into or out of the saddle.

 

Das Fell im Detail © Dan Wehner

I’m pleasantly surprised at how realistic the horse’s coat looks. I was worried it would look like a display-window mannequin, stiff and lifeless. But in fact the swirls and different shades are all visible. Even my colleagues, who were pretty sceptical at first, are impressed.

 

Das Pferd mit Sattel © Dan Wehner

My colleague has spent a week working on the coat, about 40 hours in total. All it needs now is a proper finish, some colour highlights, which we’ll airbrush in. And then our horse is all set to tread the boards: on 5th October 2018 for the premiere of WOZZECK.

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