The Parasol Gun for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by * Gregory Bell Otterbein University " G eorge takes from behind his back a short-barreled shotgun... George pulls the trigger... From the barrel of the gun blossoms a large red and yellow Chinese parasol..." These stage directions, quoted from the Dramatists Play Service script of Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, have struck fear into many a prop master's heart. When Otterbein University staged this play in 2007, I was able to make a small banner pop out of a single-shot, 12-gauge shotgun's barrel (fig.1). But a large Chinese parasol? This is a much more difficult problem. After three years working off and on in my basement machine shop, I finally have a working prop for this gag. The GUN BArreL Any gun barrel, even a 12-gauge shotgun's, is too small to contain a parasol of any significant size. Even the prop artisans on the Elizabeth Taylor-Richard Burton film had to significantly modify a bolt-action rifle to make this gag work. A close viewing Figure 1 of the film shows that the rifle's barrel was replaced with a largebore tube that could accommodate a spring-loaded umbrella. What's good enough for the movies was good enough for me. I cut the original barrel off at the shotgun's breech, tapped 3/4˝ NPT threads into the breech, and cut matching threads into one end of a 3/4˝ seamless aluminum pipe. The other end of the pipe was cut to length and bored out on the metal lathe to 7/8˝ (fig. 2). Now I was ready to solve the two main problems for this gag: (1) build a self-opening parasol about 18˝ in diameter that could fit into my custom barrel; and (2) develop a system that would push the parasol out of the barrel when the shotgun's trigger was pulled. s p r i n g 2011 theatre design & technology 45