Tale of Two Cities

 The most recent show at work was the Tale of Two Cities. It is a rendition of the classic Charles Dickens novel. The production was great and the set was amazing, not that I’m biased or anything. Kacey our set designer does amazing work. One of the most fun and cool aspects of this set was the wood. We actually found a guy online who was selling an old barn located in southern Utah. We bought an old barn and used it for the majority of the woodwork. The first joy that we ran into working with an old barn was cleaning up the old wood. This was not the typical woodworking clean up to make the wood smooth and pretty, we wanted the old weathered wood look. We had to clean up the wood from mold, dirt, and manure (it was a barn after all). How many colors of mold have you seen? We encountered almost the complete spectrum; green, black, white, gray, and many combinations of the colors. Once we cleaned up the timbers a little we were able to take the large beams and planking and make two staircases that sat in the entranceways into the theater. We also built a third stair that we made to look like stone. Along with the stairs, we made a variety of platforms that gave the stage different levels and made it look like the old wood flooring or cobblestone streets. Since I kind of feel like I am bragging if I continue to write about what we built. I will end with saying that here are a few pictures of our stairs, platforms and things that we built for the show. On a fun note, we did also make the sewer grates under the stone platform and the corbel type corner brackets.

My turn, Since Adam wont brag, I will. Adam and his dad built almost this entire set. It is an immaculate piece of art. The reviews were raving, and even the author herself wants them to design and build all her sets, and even stated that she wish they did the set for this show on Broadway.

Now here are the pictures Adam promised.