Enlarge
Scenic Rendering by Douglas W. Schmidt
When I came to New York, I was lucky enough to start out by assisting scenic designer Doug Schmidt. With Doug I assisted on Veronica’s Room (a lot of glueing fringe to lampshades) and the musical Over Here! (a lot of airbrush painting) both out-of-town and on Broadway, plus some off-Broadway and opera. From Doug I got to see how a Broadway show was put together. A true learning experience.
Early on, I helped Doug draft the musical GREASE for its final tour. In the process of doing this, Doug sent me down to visit the long-running set onstage at the Royale Theater. Something didn’t make sense in the drafting of the original set. There was a big important hinge on the GREASE set, and we couldn’t figure out how it worked and how it was originally built. It went a full 360 degrees, and hinges just don’t do that. So I was sent to investigate. A lone stagehand met me at the Royale stage door with a flashlight and I officially (or probably unofficially) went backstage on a Broadway set for my first time.
To my horror the flashlight revealed that the hinge, which was part of the huge central unit, was simply made of a solid wall of gaffer’s tape, not a piece of hardware in sight. I was horrified as I thought everything on Broadway was supposed to be super glamorous and technically sophisticated. I was so shocked that I backed up, and like I was in a movie, hit the false proscenium where the cafeteria trays were stored and they all flew off the shelf. Shockingly, they were also completely covered in gaffer’s tape and spray painted. And on my way out stage left, I saw that the “Greased Lightnin’’” car unit had gaffer’s tape on it as well with paint slathered on top. The show had just been running for so very long at that point that most everything was covered in gaffer’s tape.
My education completed, I thought “Wow, okay. Broadway is magical but there’s a lot more gaffer’s tape involved than I originally envisioned.“
