Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2011 - 21

Karl Mitchell, Ryan Luwe, Russell Homan, and Alessia
Carpoca examine the exhibit pieces in Prague.

Zak King, Russell Homan, Paul Brunner,
and R. Eric Stone in the empty exhibit.

4´, was that more joints would be seen. In an exhibit that could be viewed
from mere inches away, it was important that the walls could fit together
very snugly so the look of the walls wouldn't suffer. The design and execution of the walls had to produce tight butt joints.
I designed a wall that was a hard covered flat frame but without any
traditional plywood fasteners. Both sides of the frame were to be covered
with full sheets of 1/4˝ ply, so I knew those would act as giant corner
blocks, making a strong and stable unit. However, the difficulty comes in
the assembly: how to hold the frame in place and square while attaching the
1/4˝ ply facing. Any wall built even slightly out of square would create a gap
between walls as they fit together. To solve this I introduced my students to
a tool they had never seen before. I borrowed a pneumatic corrugated fastener gun from the Bigfork Summer Playhouse. This tool drives the fasteners
deep into the wood leaving a clean surface to attach the ply and would hold
the frame square until completely faced. To further complicate the assembly
process, I designed the flat frames to have a mortise-and-tenon method of
fitting the walls together. The flat frame was modified so that the stile on one
side of each wall was actually a 6˝ wide length of 3/4˝ ply that extended 3˝
past the frame. On the other side of the wall, the stile was inset 3˝ from the
edge of the wall, so that when the 1/4˝ ply facing was added, it created an
11´ 6˝ pocket (the mortise) on one edge and an 11´ 6˝ tenon on the other.
(As we all know, plywood is no longer milled to a full thickness, so I knew
the 3/4˝ ply would be slightly smaller and would provide just enough slop
to help in assembly.) This joinery method provided us with a joint that
was flush over its entire distance and fitted together with no mechanical
fasteners. While the walls could have stood on their own surrounding the

Steve Wing, Russell Homan, Doug Dion, the author, and Karl
Mitchell assemble ceiling trusses in the exhibit in Prague.

structure, we added a little extra security and tied the walls to the structure by manufacturing small L-shaped flat steel hooks that fit into the truss
and screwed into the top of the walls.
Once the walls were built, we needed to create and attach the bricks.
The interior bricks and the exterior bricks were to be of different qualities.
The exterior bricks, being exposed to time and the elements, were to be
rougher and more distressed. The interior bricks, while in a better condition, showed their age through the accumulation of paint and grime. To
achieve the basic brick, we cut the shape from sheets of eight-inch luan.
The exterior bricks were then taken to the upright belt sander and shaped
in a manner that mimicked years of degradation. The interior bricks were
softened lightly, but were essentially kept rectangular. As the assembly line of
faux masons worked on their faux bricks, we began attaching each course,
taking great pains to work on each wall in its correct order so that the bricks
could continue around the structure in an uninterrupted fashion. I wanted
to make sure the bricks resolved themselves correctly at each corner and
that the entire structure was consistent in brick size and placement.
Once all the walls were bricked on both sides, we could begin the
texturing of the surfaces. The exterior bricks were coated in a combination of sawdust, cheesecloth, and paint, while the interior bricks were
covered in paint and newspaper. The application process for the interior
was quite simple. The newspaper was torn into an array of misshapen
pieces and painted onto the walls, (which were laid horizontally on sawhorses) overlapping randomly. The entire surface was covered, and when
dry, utility knives would be used to trim all the edges of each wall. The
exterior treatment, while also a simple process, required a little more
f

2011

theatre design

& technology

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2011