Chaucer Theatre
News
_GEO.CHAUCER & COMPANY EVENTS CALENDAR REVIEWS CONTACT PRESENTERS
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Announcements |
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Geoffrey Chaucer and Company delighted audiences in England this |
Upcoming events In March 2004, the company will be touring southern California with the ever popular Nun's Priest's Tale (Chanticleer and the Fox). They will be bringing this lively tale to several school audiences in the Los Angeles area and upon return, will present this tale as a highlight in several of their highly popular Humanities Event formats - both in the East Bay and Marin. Keep your eyes open for further details on these exciting, fun, and educational programs coming up in March 2004! |
Building Geoffrey Chaucer and Co. Sets and Properties
by Elton Geist, GCC properties master (from his wood and metal set shop and all of the elves that work in
Colfax, CA)
Building the GCC set and properties is an extreme departure from normal set and property construction.
It takes a great deal of time and
fine wood-crafting expertise. (Just ask the elves. ) Seriously, each of the chairs and doors and walls and properties must be constructed
out of fine hardwoods for the deep satisfaction of a completely real period look and feel and to endure the rigors of touring.
To begin with, we chop down a tree. Hey, hardwoods of this caliber are way too expensive for virtually any theatre company on earth to use in this quantity.
So we ask each of you or anyone you know if you have any dying or dead or other kind of hardwood tree you would like us to harvest like walnut,
chestnut, white oak, cherry, pecan, maple, madrone, almond or other hardwood used for furniture building to invite us to harvest it. After we harvest
the trunk and largest branches, we rip them into planks or billets for drying.
When the rough cut lumber has dried for 6 to 12 months down to between 7 and 12 percent moisture content, 
it's ready for milling into the basic width
and thickness we will need.
When the artistic director gives us a rough design for a particular piece, we plan on paper how we might achieve that end.
Although the final prop or set piece is sometimes a significant departure from the first "napkin" drawing concept. Additionally, the A.D. has placed a series of structural and aesthetic constraints on the project.
| (cont.) Each of the properties must be functional. If the property in question is a medieval pitcher, then the actors must be able to pour water from a wood pitcher that doesn't leak  The furniture and set properties must be structured in such a fashion that the actors can assemble and disassemble the pieces easily in front of an audience. They must be strong, they must be safe, they must not be too heavy, it must be possible to bag and case their parts so an airline will accept them as flyer baggage rather than have them cost extra as freight. They must be beautiful or elegant or at least attractive in some fashion that adds atmospheric value to the theatrical dream. No other furniture or sets in the world have so many demands placed on them. What a terrifically wonderful challenge! Add to all of this the demanding fact that GCC properties use medieval mortising techniques. This is where a wood tenon fits through a squared or rounded hole and is secured on the far side or outside of the right angle joint by a peg through a smaller hole in the tenon. The convenience of this technique is that actors and stage hands can assemble and knock down parts of wood structures quickly. Theoretically, an entire house and all of its wood components could be exclusively held together by mortising. The drawback is that it takes a great deal longer and significant skills to create these parts than using modern screws and an impact hammer. But O, what a world of theatrically authentic and transportable difference!
Next up for the Reeves Tale; 3 narrow completely functional and beautiful 4 poster beds that can be mortised together from the component
parts of a set wall by 5 actors in the middle of a running show in less than 120 seconds! Small wonder the artistic director is hiding from
me. |
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