JACKSON BERKLEY

Machinal is a play written nearly 100 years ago that was beautifully revived by an incredible cast of performers and a taut, talented creative team for New York Theatre Company’s inaugural stage production. As Production Carpenter, I was responsible for erecting the set during a two-day load-in process.

While the build was fairly simple, the expedited timeline left little room for inefficiencies, and some initial hurdles popped up at the onset. Two carpenters called out last minute, and an unannounced street closure added some grunt work to our process. However, we were able to quickly recover, and ended Day 1 with a complete, level deck. We were forced to do some hasty “surgery” on some standard 4’x8′ decks to deliver our stage footprint to spec, and then began the laborious process of laying out nearly 500′ of tongue-and-groove flooring. This project was by far the most time-consuming, but also the most urgent, as the flooring needed to be installed before erecting the upstage columns that served as the set’s most prominent visual feature, and included LED boxes that were a key component of the show’s lighting package. Thankfully, all departments worked on top of each other beautifully, and team scenic was able to walk away from Day 2 with a completed set, minus a few small touch-ups that made for easy notes during Tech.

My mobile kit came in handy for this project, and I was very proud to have been able to deliver a handsome set in spite of some potentially gnarly setbacks. It was also great to reconnect with designers — Rochele, Brittany, Colleen — that I admire and got to know from previous projects. The talent on this show was enormous and I was glad to be a part of it.