Sweeping Staircase for "Born Yesterday" at the Guthrie Theater.

 Todd Rosenthal designed the Guthrie Theater set and needed a curved sweeping staircase to follow a curved wall. Their solution was to use gates, an old theater convention for stairs. Here are the gate I built in their shop:

Front View

 

Rear View

And here is the staircase in the trial assembly, freestanding and weight bearing:

The wall follows an arc with radius just over 18', and the treads are cut to strike radius lines at the front of the tread. The lowest two treads receive added decorative work, and then I passed the project on for finishing.

Stage installation, pre-paint and without rail:

Clybourne Park Act 1:

"Clybourne Park" demands 2 entirely separate sets to portray the same house with a 50 year time span between act 1 & act 2. This means building 2 of every piece of scenery with entirely different finishes. My work was primarily framing the main walls,  and rigging the scenery to fly. The largest units weighed in at about 1400 pounds. Flown on the Maguire Proscenium's in-house system, the riggers installed over 100 points to manage 18 flown units.

A fun time lapse clip of the 15 minute change-over is available at this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjobEnsybNM

"Behold - a Gala" at The Guthrie Theater on Saturday June 22, 2013

Two mirrored units which roll into playing position and secure using De-Sta-Co locks: Units marry perfectly and form a central dais for the presenters and celebrities. Construction is steel frame with bent tube members supporting the steps covered with OSB and finished with MDF, 2 knife guides fall into a floor slot. The steel rail features acrylic insert panels held in place with lightweight press-on molding.