Making A Scene!
By Michael Cottee, Chairman of Beeston Musical Theatre Group
It occurs to me that the majority of people see the scenery appear at the beginning of show week and see it disappear at the end without any real knowledge of what happens for the rest of the year. So I thought it might be an idea to try to write a short article describing where and what David Hinchliffe and I get up to from June to October.
The scenery store/workshop is composed of a shed about 25ft long and 12ft wide with large double doors at one end. Outside, parallel to the doors, is a bench about 7ft long and 3ft 6ins wide which is covered by a sloping roof so that we can work outside even when it's raining. The accompanying photos give you a rough idea of what it looks like.
As you can see from the photos the shed is practically full of flats, rostra, sheet timber, timber, props, the tower, tools and equipment, leaving no room to actually work inside. You can also see that this year we have moved the stage extensions outside covered with plastic sheeting together with the two trucks that we built for "Viva Mexico". We did this to give us access to the timber, if we hadn't we would have to climb over to source timber and we're both getting too old for that!
Having said that, everything we build for each show has to be put back into the store each time we pack up and be brought out again on the following day, which to say the least is a little time and energy consuming! When we first started to build the scenery, I think the "The Pirates of Penzance" was our first show, we didn't have much in the way of tools or equipment, the old scenery was past redemption and so we more or less started from scratch. Gradually though we have, over the years, added new tools:- 4 cordless screwdrivers, jigsaw, a bench mounted circular saw, 2 mains powered drills, a mains powered hand planer, a hand held circular saw, a mains powered flat sander and a fairly comprehensive amount of new timber. We are now reasonably confident that there isn't much that we can't build; even if most of the time we have no idea how to start! It seems that every director, and our scenery designer, scheme together to specify something new and more complex each year! However we manage to use our little grey cells successfully and win in the end.
Actually it's not the complexity of the design that is our greatest enemy, it's ourselves! We're both saddled with catastrophic memories and there is many a time that we pick up a tape measure, wonder what the other hand should have in it, remember that it's a pencil, find the pencil which is usually behind David's ear and then wonder what we wanted the tape and pencil for in the first place! It's called 'Old timers' disease! 'Senior Moments' are the order of the day but they do create a great deal of laughter. The words I dread to hear from David are 'Hang on, something's not right!' I hang on whilst his brain works out what he thinks is wrong which takes time because it's usually right in the first place. However I have to say that occasionally he is right and we go on to plan 'B'.
Measurements are our bête noir, we were both brought up in 'Imperial' and have had to convert to Metric and we have made some laughable mistakes over the years but we are getting better! Another problem is that when the building was first constructed the builders made the concrete floor very flat, which is good I hear you say. However when it rains the water doesn't run off and so we spend many a day there wading in an inch of water which is a little irritating but we have become very used to it and the rain doesn't stop us. Stuart built the roof over the bench and it was the best piece of work he has ever done and both David and I are extremely grateful to him.
As each piece of scenery is completed we give it a coat of white emulsion as a base for whatever design Celia has planned. When we have sufficient to make it worth her while, Celia travels from Chesterfield to carry out the painting work after which each piece has to be placed back in the store. This means that when we are painting flats we probably move them in and out over twenty times before they are all completed. I guess we spend a good quarter of our time moving stuff in and out of the store! The trucks for "Viva Mexico" gave us many headaches, they were too large to store inside and so we had to cover them every time we packed up for the day with plastic sheeting to try to keep them dry. However if you looked closely, some of the verdegris painted on by Celia was in fact real!
One of the problems we have is translating the scaled size of the sets to reality, taking special care to ensure that they actually fit the stage. We were especially proud of the JCS set in that with only a couple of small adjustments it fitted exactly onto the stage and round the stage right pros corner. We only had one opportunity to lay it out at Shepshed to check the final measurements but, fortunately, all was well and the resulting completed set was, in my biased view, stunning. The flats in "Viva Mexico" all had two designs and were hinged to allow easy changes of the set. Again, fortunately, everything fitted, even the Sun Disk worked as planned!
David and I spend, on average, 3 days a week at Shepshed, usually finishing around 2-30pm, knackered! There is a 'fat' van parked about 50 metres away and this provides us with a welcome lunch and pints of tea each day to keep us hydrated. We have a radio to catch the news, a bar-b-q which we have never used, chairs and tables to dine on, quite a home from home when the sun shines, not quite so comfortable when it's cold and wet, but, hey!, you can't have everything!
One day in the not too distant future, David and I will be too old to continue and you will have the problem of finding someone to volunteer to continue the good work. Think about it, a good set enhances the work that you do, we've built some good scenery over the last 6/8 years, let's think ahead to ensure that this continues.
