Theatre sets

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

This is an interesting play about a neurodivergent protagonist as he tries to solve the murder of his neighbour’s dog, and encounters some other mysteries as well.

Set design is by Hayley Bamford.

It is playing now until May 25; tickets at gallery7theatre.com.

The build happened over a week and a half, with some help from three volunteers. It was a very simple set although I still had to plan how to build it so it could travel. Note to self: measure the inside doors of the auditorium next time you assume they are the same size as the outside doors…

The set designer spent some serious time painting the set and backdrops. It looks fantastic!

Platforms, boxes, and stairs:

Joined platforms, stairs, and railings:

Canvases: I made 5 frames – 2 large ones, and 3 huge ones! Then looked at a couple of youtube videos to learn how to stretch canvas on them. It seemed to work out! Hayley took care of priming and painting them, luckily for me! The biggest ones are 9 feet x 9 feet.

Load in:

Gallery 7‘s production of A Tale of Two Cities is now playing at Abbotsford Arts Centre. I designed and built the set. Here are some pictures!

Design was fairly simple: Floor with trapdoor, a couple of risers, and backdrop of a city skyline, with some furniture to create different scenes.

These show some of the build in progress: windowframes, flooring, candelabras, wedding arch, walls, trapdoor stage plug, chairs.

There were also some custom barrels which I cover in detail in this blog post.

The backdrop was a large undertaking, being 30 feet wide by 15 feet high, with windows that could be lit from behind.

It was flown in, so needed to be structurally sound. It was constructed of 2×2 SPF and recycled coroplast. Windows were painted muslin. Brick work was painted with a roller with slats cut out and dipped in various colours of paint.