Berkeley Rep Blog
Category archive: Scene shop
Fabric origami with Chris Palmer
posted by Karen McKevitt on Tue, Jan 24, 2012
in Costume shop , Prop shop , Scene shop
Berkeley Rep's shops are filled with pretty awesome, talented artisans who are always curious and ready to learn new things (and build some awesome things too). That tradition continued last Friday when the costume shop hosted an in-house fabric origami workshop taught by the amazing artist Chris Palmer, author of Shadowfolds. He taught members of the costume, prop, and scenic shops his method of folding fabric to make three-dimensional geometric designs.
Kitty Muntzel, the costume shop's draper, instigated this post -- and pointed me to a terrific blog post by our Scenic Charge Artist Lisa Lazar, who allowed me to repost it (with some slight changes) here.
I could a tale unfold...
On Friday I had the great fortune to participate in a workshop with artist Chris Palmer.
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Building a New Book
posted by Karen McKevitt on Wed, Oct 5, 2011
in Our shows , Scene shop
By Lisa Lazar, charge scenic artist
Bill Cain's How to Write a New Book for the Bible, directed by Kent Nicholson, begins performances on Friday. Get a glimpse behind-the-scenes and see how some of the set elements came together for this new play.
The scene shop is in the middle of building How to Write a New Book for the Bible. We are delighted to work on any show designed by the Scott Bradley.
Carpenter Colin Babcock stands in front of one of the windows he built. This particular window will eventually feature faux stained glass.
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At Burning Man
posted by Karen McKevitt on Fri, Sep 23, 2011
in Scene shop
By Colin Babcock
As master carpenter of Berkeley Rep, I am constantly confronted with new challenges and get to work with new materials and techniques. It’s my favorite part about my job. Recently I built the rolling fire escape and stoop unit you saw on stage in Rita Moreno: Life Without Makeup. The stoop unit was tricky. It had to be wheeled out and placed on its spike mark and stay there as Rita Moreno recounted her early years in New York. To accomplish my given task, I drew upon past Berkeley Rep experience, with some help from my wife Stephanie Shipman, who built two rolling desks for The People’s Temple back when she was the scene-shop intern during the 2004/05 season. I was able to base the engineering of my stoop on what she did with the desks, but augmented her design with some techniques I recently employed on an outside project. I devised a lever-and-pulley system in the stoop that engages the wheels in much the same way that I made the rudder turn with the front wheels of the 25-foot-long submarine my friends and I made from scratch this summer.
The task was to build a replica of Captain Nemo’s Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea that could be driven around the playa at the recent Burning Man Festival in Nevada. About 40 of us worked long nights and weekends all summer long at the Five Ton Crane Headquarters in West Oakland to accomplish our goal.
Attaching skeleton to the vehicle
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Conceptual Cargo construction
posted by Kate Vangeloff on Thu, Feb 10, 2011
in Our shows , Prop shop , Scene shop
So just how did they build the set for The Last Cargo Cult? How does it stay together? Where do the boxes go while Steve Jobs is being performed? Who owns the contents of the "iPig" box?
Excellent questions, my friends.
Being unsure myself, I felt it was time to do some set-inspired sleuthing. I began my inspection by performing some very scientific data-gathering methods such as "sneaking into the theatre" and "gently poking the boxes to see what would happen."
(I think it is important to note at this point that this research is confidential, so please don't disclose my methods to Mike Daisey or Jean-Michele Gregory...or stage management...or anyone for that matter.)
Not much knowledge was gleaned from this first attempt other than the fact that sneaking into a theatre and gently poking cardboard boxes makes one feel like a bit of an idiot, so I decided to dig deeper. I had heard a whisper of a rumor that although I had previously enjoyed imagining that the Cargo Cult boxes spent their week off sight-seeing, carousing, and generally making merry, that the boxes were actually kept inside the now somewhat-abandoned prop shop at Addison Street. I accosted a hapless facilities crew member and convinced them to let me into the prop shop which, I might add, was ominously locked.
On the breathless verge of discovery, I slowly opened the heavy, creaking door. After a tense moment fumbling to find the light switch -- behold! Six mounds of corrugated consumerism materialized before my eyes along with the truth I was so desperately seeking. Why hadn't I seen it before? But of course: Box Tetris!
Let me explain. Each individual box is part of one of six larger units of boxes fastened together with hot glue. These “playing pieces” are stacked on large crates to add height and fitted together in a Tetris-like fashion to create the illusion of the mountain of materialism looming over Mike Daisey.
Case closed.
Now if I could only figure out who owns the iPig and why...
Photo of Mike Daisey in The Last Cargo Cult by kevinberne.com.
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Geeking out on the "Composer" set
posted by Karen McKevitt on Wed, Dec 1, 2010
in Our shows , Scene shop
Lemony Snicket’s The Composer is Dead features any number of things for a crafter/DIYer to geek out on. In a previous blog post, I wrote a little bit about the marionette orchestra and Phantom Limb, who were also featured in an SFGate.com article. But when I found out about the set, which is based on Victorian toy theatres, my crafter geek-o-meter went to 11.
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American Idiot needs you!
posted by Bert Reptile on Mon, Aug 3, 2009
in Scene shop
Here’s your chance to be part of American Idiot.
Set designer Christine Jones, part of the extraordinary team of artists working to turn a seminal Green Day album into a raging piece of rock ‘n’ roll theater, is sending out a call to musicians and fans to be – literally – part of her set.
Christine would like you to send in artwork that has been generated for your own bands –for concert posters or album covers – which would then be used to paper the walls of the warehouse-like set.
She is also interested in handwritten song lists and handwritten pages of songs in the process of being written. Photocopies are acceptable.
Send your submissions by Aug. 25 to: Berkeley Repertory Theatre Scenic Studios, Attention Lisa Lazar, Scenic Artist, 2526 Wood St., Oakland CA 94607.
Once the articles you send become part of the set, obviously, they cannot be returned, but they will be part of history as American Idiot makes its world premiere at Berkeley Rep Sep 4-Oct 11.
