Have you ever heard of mail by carrier snake?
Being that the basilisk had to deliver a letter, we decided to have it drop from its mouth, and with that, we needed a way for it to hold onto it till it was delivered. So, I made up a sleeve made of a stretch fabric that the actor would wear and stick through a hole in its mouth to act as the tongue and drop the letter as it needs to be.
Sometimes you gotta go big.
Even though the snake was only on stage for 30 seconds, it was asked that I create something menacing and large, so we decided that there was nothing scarier than a 20-foot-tall basilisk. We ended up mounting the body onto a rolling stair unit where the actor would stand at the top with the head harnessed on and clipped to the railing for safety.
