Construction Crew at LAMDA
The Project
As a student at LAMDA, we are thrown straight into working on shows after a short period of study, to learn in a hands on practical environment. The first rotation I was placed was construction, My team was tasked with building the sets for the 4 sets in our Fall rotation. I worked with 7 of my year mates, under the guidance of the Production and Deputy carpenters(second years) and the tutors.
My Approach
We started with looking at the Model boxes to get an idea of what we were going to be building, and while that was happening our Prod and Dep Carpenters were creating technical drawings for us to build from. Under the guidance of our tutors we were taught how to use the necessary tools, the way to read the technical drawings, and how to build in both a time and cost effective manner. Two of the show would be using more or less the same set build which cut down on the amount we needed to make, and one of the others had a very small set that was mostly curtains that were being sent out to a seamstress.
Bumps in the road
While all the sets were a challenge due to the learning process they all came along well. Our largest challenge occurred when, not even halfway through cutting out the pieces needed, our CNC machine broke. This is a fixable problem, but when on a time crunch and particular pieces needing to be made it posed quite the problem. As you can see In the photo above, there were many angles that we needed to put rounded curves on, and to make the filler pieces identical and exact we were using the CNC machine.
While we did order a new bit for the CNC machine, it took a bit to arrive, so in the meantime as we were on a time crunch I became quite handy with a jigsaw.
Final Product
The end relate of our works was sets we were able to deconstruct to transport and then build in the venue. Two of the shows were in the same venue, and as such in between shows we had to alter the set and either take down the side walls of the grey set below, or put them back up depending on what show was happening.
