The latest thing I've done is to build a set of heraldic shields for a Trim Balloon Festival. Have a look at the project page for details.
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This show was produced by Trim Musical Society, who are now in their 24th year and have achieved an
extremely high standard of production.
The Society's home venue is Trim Town Hall. The most challenging aspect of staging productions here is the physical shape
of the stage. The hall was constructed adjacent to the DeLacey Norman Castle, which is the biggest landmark in Trim and the
reason for the existence of the town. The castle walls are preserved and consequently the stage area is truncated at one
side in order not to encroach too close to the castle wall.
It has always been a challenge to the society to build a set that meets the requirements of the show and fits in the unusual space of the stage. A lot of productions have tended to be mostly set towards Stage Left producing an unbalanced picture. The society has a large cast and the challenge was to design a set which could accommodate the cast and not look too crowded. From the drawing above you can see that stage has an apron which extends 1.5m from the proscenium. Again as a compromise the apron only extends beyond the stage right side of the proscenium arch by about 500cm. This is to accommodate a fire exit in the corner of the auditorium.
Usually the orchestra is located in front of the stage and occupies a space which extends out from the stage by 2m. For Anything Goes I decided to extend the stage over this area and to relocate the orchestra to the back of the stage area. In essence the show is being brought out through the proscenium and closer to the audience. A second level is usually required for this show and that allowed the orchestra be accommodated on the upper deck thus giving a clear crossover for the cast on the lower level.
The stage was extended over the orchestra pit with a curved front to simulate the back of the ship. An “SS American” nameplate
was fitted to the front of the extension.
Scaffolding
The upper level is essentially a scaffolding platform with some modifications to allow two trucked pieces to be parked underneath
and also to allow the cast a passageway across the back of the stage. Here is a simple plan drawing of the arrangement. There
are 4 separate pieces which were tied together with horizontal 9”x 2” planks which made the structure very strong and safe. The
platform area is indicated on the drawing to the left. Some technology pieces were added to the stage for this arrangement. A
CCTV camera was mounted on the No.1 FOH lighting bar with a feed to the stage manager's desk on stage left and also up to the
platform for the musical director. In reverse a second camera was trained on the MD with a monitor installed in the front of
the stage for the cast.
Having the main structural elements of the set in place I moved on to building the steps up from the stage. They were designed
to make use of available pieces so they incorporated a landing three steps up from the stage followed by 6 steps angled slightly
onstage to make the picture interesting rather than having a set of steps running straight up and down. The arrangement was
completed by arranging steps offstage for entrances and exits. The entrances are indicated by the arrows. This allowed the chorus
to make smooth entrances and exits without having to queue to get off stage. The steps are shown on the right.
The stage has a height limitation as the Proscenium is only 12 feet high. The stage is 48” from the floor of the auditorium so this
benefited sightlines for cast on the upper level. It was very tight anyway and the upper level was only 2m off the stage. This
in turn led to the trucked pieces being only 1.8m high to allow for safe parking and allowing for the scaffolding bars. By the way
I work in both metric and imperial measurements as the stage was built fifty years ago, but all the materials now arrive in
metric sizes.
Two trucked pieces were built to represent the two below deck state rooms. These were parked under the platform when not in use and
were rolled downstage and opened to reveal the two rooms with adjoining passageway. The trucks had a functional door set in a door
frame only to represent the side of the cabin. For the cabin scenes the trucks were pushed downstage and the front was hinged out to
reveal the interior. The hinged piece masked the steps etc and produced a nice picture to the audience. See the drawing on the left hand side
for details of this part of the set.
Finally the top of the platform accommodated the 8 piece orchestra, who were masked from the audience by a series of flats
representing the upper deck of the ship. The middle three flats were flown out to reveal the orchestra for the overture,
the nightclub scene in Act 2 and the finale/bows.
Included below you can see a couple of final drawings / renderings I did of the set.
Finally, here is an animation of how it all fitted together. You can see the orchestra area above which is hidden for part
of the show, and the convertable cabin / deck below at stage level.