Technical Design Solutions for Theatre

Robert Duggan

Tube Steel Perimeter Framing for Flats

The ceiling for the Yale Repertory Theatre’s 1997 production of Candida was essentially a large trapezoid that covered most of the set. See Figure 1. It had to look as nearly seamless as possible, and it needed to load in quickly and be raised out of the way so that the set’s walls could be assembled underneath it. Moreover, for scheduling reasons, the ceiling’s cover had to be delivered to paints before the carpenters officially began building the show. The obvious solution was a muslin cover that could be sewn together and painted early, and then stretched over one or more separately built frames during load-in. The approach is an old one, but the framing system deserves review because ...