A Bright New Boise / Letters from Max
Scenic Carpenter
(Technical Director: Quinton McEvoy)
Signature Theatre Company
January 2023
To kick off 2023, I loaded in Boise and Max, respectively, in two consecutive weeks (in two adjacent theaters!) at the Signature Center on 42nd Street.
Boise was a fun, simple build – the set is the break room at a Hobby Lobby – that involved some time-consuming rigging. To create the ceiling of the break room, we flew up three sets of trellis to the grid, with fluorescent tubes hanging below each set from long hex head bolts. This process was somewhat tedious due to the staggered steps involved: we screwed the trellises together on the deck, then flew them to eye level to install the fluorescents, after flying them up to the predetermined height, we had to navigate a Genie to each pick point to adjust the griplocks and ensure that the entire structure was level – then repeat for the next set. Once we had our ceiling up and flooring installed, though, placing the flats and dressing the set was not complicated: a series of adjacent cabinets, installed using a French pleat system, then some steel conduit, an Exit sign, a door jamb, and baseboards.
Max’s set was a very different beast: while the set was minimalist in design, it consisted of three stories of curved flats, effectively forming a cyclorama. The centerpiece was a large zoetrope, which needed to spin quickly and quietly several times a night. Much of our work during the load-in focused on creating a seamless curve throughout the tall stack of flats: often, myself and another carpenter would find ourselves on either side of a wall of flat, one of us inspecting the onstage seam while the other banged on the flat with a deadblow, or used the “hammer trick” to flush the flats into place.
I really enjoyed working with the teams on both Boise and Max, and with the house folks at Signature, whom I’ve worked with on multiple occasions over the past six months.