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Scenic, Props and Armoury Workshops

The National's Scenic, Props and Armoury Workshops
by Jonathan Croall

See Scenic Construction in discover: Making Theatre

See Props in discover: Making Theatre

Paintframe_Tartuffe
The paintframe working on Tartuffe photo Stephen Cummiskey




In the middle of a vast room in the bowels of the National, two men are busy making adjustments to a forest of metal and polystyrene trees. A third is painting green the wall of a college. Others are intent on putting the finishing touches to several clumps of cardboard bulrushes, to make them look real.



This is the scenery workshop, where numerous parts of the set for the stage version of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials are being made. It's a big production in every sense – there are a hundred scenes – and one that presents a huge challenge to the 35 highly skilled men and women in the National's workshops and props department. Largely unsung, their work makes a vital contribution to the success of the twenty plus shows a year staged in the Olivier, Lyttelton and Cottesloe theatres.



Paint Frame 2
Paint Frame Illustration Jim Russell




The larger set items and props for all NT productions are made or painted in two enormous, high-ceilinged spaces, the scenery and carpentry workshops. The more intricate or manageable-size objects are created next door in a smaller general workshop, while weapons of varying degrees of sophistication are made or assembled in the armoury, housed above the carpentry workshop.



Paint Frame
Paint Frame Illustration Jim Russell




“The prop makers are a fantastic group of people with a huge range of abilities,” says Fraser Burchill, head properties maker. “Any of them might combine metalworking, painting, mould-making, sewing, sculpting and cabinet-making skills – and use them all on a single job. The work is incredibly diverse: one week it's creating sculpture for a Greek tragedy, the next fake vol-au-vents for an Ayckbourn show.”



Once the scenery and props for a production are decided on, the nine prop makers work from scale models and detailed drawings. Some tasks are more straightforward than others. In the general workshop Victoria Fifield has made a simple wooden coffin for Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman, but is now building up one side to allow for the raked stage. Michelle McLucas is busy creating a chaise-longue for His Dark Materials, but is having to adapt it so that two puppets can be concealed inside. Eleswhere Stephen Brown is devising a circular metal tree seat for the Pullman show. A delicate work of art in itself, it has to be made to split in two, with one half moving off on the Olivier revolve.



Props
Props - wood turning Illustration Jim Russell




Because of restrictions of space in the general workshops some items of scenery, such as the large back wall created for Henry V, have to be built in sections, and then assembled in the gigantic carpentry workshop. At present this area houses two major creations for His Dark Materials, on which the makers and carpenters have joined forces: a life-size bus-stop constructed out of wood and metal, now ready to be painted, and a 10-foot-high café made of steel and wood with a cladded corrugated roof, just awaiting its canopy and neon sign.



“The challenge is to find the quickest and cheapest way of solving each problem,” says Fraser Burchill. “You have to be very aware of new materials as well as existing ones, but it's also a matter of being inventive with those materials, of creating something robust that will function properly and look authentic.”



One whole wall of the scenery workshop is used as a paint-frame. Here backcloths of all sizes can be painted and sprayed, the artists working from three independent platforms which can move upwards and sideways. For His Dark Materials they're working on a big tarpaulin, which has to be “aged”, and then have handwriting applied to it. The platforms are also useful when a bird's eye view is needed of a newly painted floorcloth.



There's painting of another kind too. Both Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra and His Dark Materials require lifelike portraits for the walls of the set. While those for the former are being painted from photographs of actors Helen Mirren and Tim Pigott-Smith in costume, for the latter the plan is to experiment with computer graphics, now an established element in the workshops' resources.



Inevitably, once rehearsals begin, there will be fresh demands on the workshop staff from a show's designer or director, or in some cases a change of mind. A recent example of the latter was the smoke machine built for His Dark Materials. Paul Wanklin, who runs the armoury, adapted a fire extinguisher to produce carbon dioxide, to simulate the effect of demons coming out of the floor. 'Then it got cut,' he says ruefully. 'It was too high maintenance, and too costly.'



The armoury is like a rather intimidating toyshop. The shelves of one small room are stuffed with British, Russian and German guns from the second world war, as well as ones which Paul Wanklin has bought and adapted for specific productions. The corridor is lined with swords of many designs and periods, most of which he has customised, using parts from different weapons. There's also a bewildering variety of daggers, including one he's made for His Dark Materials which is used to cut between the parallel worlds of the story and has to shatter into pieces.



Armoury
Armoury Illustration by Jim Russell




Sometimes he works with fire, as with the earthquake in Bacchai and the special effect in Jerry Springer – The Opera. For The Pillowman he's devised a fiendish torture machine, which spins and emits sparks. Some of his other creations have involved animatronics, such as the pet tortoise that Simon Russell Beale squashes in Jumpers, or the animated lobster that terrified the guests in Dinner.



Working in tandem with the Prop Making department is the Prop Buying department. Once the decision is made to buy rather than make, then the hunt is on for the three buyers, who visit antique shops and fairs, scour furniture stores, look through books and catalogues, search the West End for fabrics, or raid the National's store in Brixton.



“Every day is different,” says head prop buyer Jane Slattery. “The challenge is to understand the kind of thing a designer wants, and to solve the problems on time and on budget.” At present she's working on Mourning Becomes Electra. “It's not a very proppy show, which in one way makes it relatively simple. On the other hand Bob Crowley is keeping the design rather cool with a fairly narrow colour range, so that makes it a little harder to find the right things.”



Her colleague Ellie Smith is working on His Dark Materials. Her unusual props list includes the materials for the all-important alethiometer – a form of compass that can answer questions – and the cloudpine sticks, a kind of witch's broomstick. “For this show it's not just the look of the props that count,” she says. “With so many quick scene changes, you also have to take into account their weight and size.”



Prop Buying
Prop Buying Illustration Jim Russell




Like the prop makers, the buyers need to be adaptable. “If you did the show you costed at the beginning, you could probably go home for two weeks,” Jane Slattery says. “But a production is an organic thing, new requests come out of rehearsals, actors get bored with certain props. There are often last-minute problems, even as late as the previews, so you need to leave enough money in the bank for when a show gets on stage.”



The ingenuity, skill and commitment of these essential workers behind the scenes is deeply impressive, but nothing less than you'd expect in a 'National Theatre'.