Scenic construction skills
About
Although most of the personnel in the scenic construction department are specialists in a particular field – such as carpentry or metalwork – they need to have a wide range of skills which reach beyond their core discipline. This is often due to the wide range of materials which the scenic construction team works with.
People featured in this video include:
Paul Evans, Head of Scenic Construction
John Pickersgill, Draughtsperson / Senior Carpenter
Ken Rose, Deputy Head of Scenic Construction
Transcript
Paul Evans: We cover a very wide range of things; we want more from somebody than just being a carpenter or just being a metalworker, we want a little bit more, somebody who is prepared to try to work with new materials, just push it a little bit.
John Pickersgill: Your skills have to be relatively broad. At anytime, working on stage you might be asked to hang a door or to prepare a flat. Quite often people can weld, they’re carpenters as well, they can work with polystyrene, they can work with plastics.
Ken Rose: When things are flown we can’t have things falling on actor’s heads, they must be absolutely safe and that takes the skill of the guys downstairs.
Paul Evans: The staff we have at the moment are a mixture: some very, very experienced carpenters, engineers and metalworkers, and a younger generation who have come from drama schools. They still have the hand-skills and the ability of the older generation but they are much more interested in the artistic side of it as well which can be very, very helpful.