SET CONSTRUCTION
Gaieties Musical Set
Gaieties is a 90-minute musical comedy that satirizes Stanford’s relationship with its rival, the University of California Berkeley. For the 2019 iteration of the show, I was tasked by the set designer to draft and construct the left half of the stage based on her concept sketches. This is what I came up with.
I began by drafting the stud wall that would comprise the main structural element of the set piece. The stud wall needed to be 12ft wide and strong enough to support a substantial amount of weight. It also needed to have a 4ft wide passageway in the middle so that actors could enter the stage from the back. Once the draft was complete, I led a team of builders to assemble the stud wall out of 2x4 lumber. Next, I drafted safety railings disguised as roof tiles that would line the front and back of the platform. These were made out of 1x4 and 2x4 lumber planks, 4x8 sheets of luan painted to look like roof tiles screwed to angled posts. After the railings were complete, I drafted three arches out of plywood, then had them painted to look like stones. Then, facing was cut out of luan to cover the rest of the platform. Finally, a colleague designed and cut support beams that would, along with the stud wall, hold wooden platforms. We packed up all of the pieces from our build site and assembled them all in the theatre. |