How to rob a bank

The director’s request was a transformable stage set with a real self-closing door and something that made seem the actors coming out of a manhole, even on stages without a trapdoor.

The outlined space makes the poor and outcast characters seem to live in a self-created cage: there are no walls but they don’t find a way out of their condition.

For the second and third act the set changes into a bank agency. The characters had to enter the agency at night through a manhole. It was rather tricky to find a way to make that seem realistic without a trapdoor from the under stage and with a minimalist set design, but at least Susanne figured out a brilliant procedure and none of the audience did ever discover from where the six actors emerged.

Susanne designed and built the transformable stage set and trained the amateur group for a very quick scene-change while curtain up, gaining applauses for the smooth operation.