Drama New Zealand

I arrived at Auckland’s  Maidment Theatre at 10am this morning. The auditorium has undergone a significant change in the past 12 hours alone. Gone is Le Sud’s opulent set, I asked Ben Hambling the technical manager whether Tracey Grant-Lord’s set has been packed away his reply was, “Yes in a skip bin.”! Even big theatre’s  it appears have no room for sentimentality.  Le Sud in fact had its final show last night and between the hours of 10:30pm to 3:00am a crew de rigged the lighting , packed out props/costumes and dispatched the set. I trust the beautiful wall paper wasn’t binned.

By the time I arrived today the new set for The Importance of Being Earnest was being constructed on stage by a 4 man crew of out workers known as ‘2 Construct’. The set comprises of 6 joining flats, each flat is approx 5 meters high and 1 .2 meters wide. Attached to these flats is a ‘skin’ of fabric that is made of rolls of calico that has been dunked in glue, dried  and painted white to give it a scrunchy textured look . This pre constructed set is being assembled under the supervision of designer John Parker and it will eventually resemble a photographic studio with a curving mid area where the floor and walls meet . It definitely looks very effective with this skin of fabric also covering the entire floor area. The flooring is elevated and on a slight rake, what particularly stood out for me was how the versatile standard rostrum (a work horse used in many schools) is being used to create a flooring that has strong visual impact.  Obviously photo’s will communicate this effect much better but as a general description, the flooring comprises of 4 rostrums at 1.8 meters by 1.2 meters wide and in terms of depth, the floor goes 4 rostrums back. The rake does not go the usual way of up stage to back stage, but from stage right with no elevation to stage left which is 40 cm high. This rake is simply created by having cut legs that are approx 10 cm, 20 cm, 30cm and 40cm where the rostrums join. On the top of the rostrum is one layer of 12-14 ml MDF to silence any creaks from the rostrum.

12:30 pm. The theatre space has become a lot busier since the arrival of the lighting crew (all 6 dressed in black) who are hanging general lights and programming the specials. One thing of interest is that both the set and lighting crews appear to be able to co exist as there is no lighting  design above the set and stage. This is probably by design where as good things like this at school are usually by luck! The lighting comprises of an impressive truss on both sides (also being constructed as I speak) of the stage as well as a circle rail rig which is above the audience in the stalls. At this stage the lighting designer Tony Rabbit is not required as the rigging appears to be in the hands of the Technical Manager. The lighting designer, no doubt will be on site later this evening when the focus begins.