Haman's Horrible Hanging Machine

There was consternation in the camp last Wednesday during our Open the Book rehearsal.  We were scheduled to act out the story of Esther. The 'Open the Book' version condenses ten chapters down to a page and a half. If you are familiar with this story, you will know that the villain of the piece, Haman, dies rather sooner than he anticipates.  What is more, his demise comes on the very apparatus he had prepared for his enemies. Just one problem, how can we help the children, aged four to nine years, to understand this story of arrogance, hatred, potential genocide, personal ambition and death, without permanently traumatising them? Fortunately, the script interprets the pole on which our plotter planned to impale his victim, as Haman's horrible hanging machine. The snazzy name still leaves us with a death to act out. The guidebook advises a pantomime approach. Cue 'Oh no It doesn't!'

"We need to think 'Heath Robinson'!" I announce. The rest of the team look at me dubiously.
"Some cardboard cogs....and a rotating yellow duck fitted to the top of a pole!" I continue. By now they are convinced that I have lost the plot.
At the mention of the rotating duck, he who had volunteered to create our version of Haman's horrible hanging machine, hurriedly hands the task back to me
"You seem to have an idea, why don't you make it?"

Tuesday afternoon arrives, and DH remembers the task hanging over us, so to speak.
"What about this hanging machine? I don't understand how it is going to work?"
I try to explain.
"It doesn't need to actually work. It doesn't have to be capable of hanging anyone. It just needs to give the impression that it could do something. We are not really going to build a hanging machine, we are creating an illusion of a machine."  
I can tell that DH is still not convinced, but he humours me. I set to work, drawing cogs on some squares of tri-wall cardboard.
"Aren't you going to cut them out?" enquires DH.
"No!  Have you ever tried cutting this stuff? It is hard work! Scissors just dig into your hands whilst any progress is painfully slow. It also makes a horrible mess. The children can turn them even if they are still squares!"
I could have used a knife, but deep down I was afraid of accidentally cutting more than the cardboard, so I ducked out...

I find an online outline of a duck and put two sheets of bright yellow card into the paper tray of the printer. I copy the duck outline into a document. The image is then reversed and copied on to the second page. I send the file to the printer, and go and collect my beautifully printed pages....except they aren't! I have a duck both sides of one piece of bright yellow card and, to make things worse, the picture on the reverse is upside down!

Some of the parts of the whole

A few months back DH managed to get the wireless printing working on every computer in the universe household. The down-side of this achievement is that the default is now double-sided printing - unless you remember to untick the box... After twenty-five years of printing single-sided, I have consistantly failed to remember this additional quirk prior to pressing 'print'. DH smugly informs me that his computer no longer defaults to double-sided printing, as he has correctly cancelled this option sufficient times, for his computer to understand that he does not want it to print double-sided, unless he specifically instructs it to. I plead that there must be a way of setting the computer not to print double-sided. He claims that he does not know how to achieve this, and the only solution is for me to pay greater attention. You can imagine how well that went down...
I threaten the printer with Haman's horrible hanging machine and send a second copy of page two to the printer.

The ducks are then cut out, and attached to each other with my favourite craft item - double sided sticky tape, leaving a gap at the bottom to allow the pole to be inserted. A clothes airer and old curtain are added to the list of props, as is the heavyweight chain, which will clank into a metal container, providing added sound effects.  The demise of Haman will this take place out of sight, behind the curtain draped clothes airer, and three 'square' cogs, watched over by a rotating duck. Well, that was the plan...

On the day, the duck rotated, but the children with the cogs were so engrossed in the story, they forgot to rotate - did it matter? Nah!  Haman the horrible was hung, while hidden, by his 'Heath Robinson' hanging machine. No-one was traumatised, and moral of the story was that Esther took a risk, and saved her people.

Haman hoisted?

Later, I re-read the book of Esther, curious to know how the bible depicted Haman's demise. I then realised that according to the Book of Esther, horrible Haman was impaled on a 75 foot high pole. It made no mention of rotating, but all of a sudden the duck symbolised Haman in a way I had never foreseen.