Sweeney Todd: The Barber's Pole.

For the past two weeks I have been working on three separate shows, the production week in Newbury for the set I helped construct in Lewes, Scenic painting in Cambridge on the set for Ghosts, that begins its run at the Theatre Royal Winchester from next week, and Sweeney Todd, which is rapidly approaching its production week. For Todd I have been working on several aspects of the set at once, but will talk about them separately and focus on them one at a time.

The barber's pole I decided to include is one of the smallest sections of the set, it also proved to be the hardest, most complex and overall most fun part to make.

Initially I had only included it as a refernece point for the steampunk style of the production, but I ended up becoming quite intersted in actually having one in the set. At first it seemed like one of those aspects of a set which isn't crucial, but would be nice to have on stage if there was time and budget for (being a drama society show). Lookig at it now I'm glad I made the choice to build it, not only is it instantly recogniseable to the audience but it sets the scene and plays the role of quite an iconic symbol of the story, I know Tim Burton used alot of promotional posters for his film version which were simply the title and a barber's pole below it.

The firt thing I did then was try and find something practical that could form the main tube section of the piece. Like the oven I avoided spending any money at all and instead searched and scavenged for an appropriate object. I eventually stumbled across the perfect shape when I was walking home from uni. Round the back of the theatre there is alot of building walk going on and as a result the area is a huge construction site. Here I managed to find a bit of discarded drainage piping that had been left by the road, as you can see below.


 As you can see from the picture the tube had a massive gash in the side of
 it where it had partially shattered and left a unusually shape in the side. My original idea was simply to cut the unspoilt sections from the top and bottom, stick those together and throw away the part which had been badly damaged. However, I eventually decided to make the most out of this opportunity and include the broken part into the actually structure. It would have been incredibly difficult for me to have created the same effect with a normal piece of tubing, so I instead decided to remove the top and bottom as planned (a it would be too long) and keep the broken middle section. By pure coincidence the gash only effected half of the circumference of the tube. This meant that if I left the tube free in its frame I could have the broken side on show for the first act of the play, when the shop has been abandoned for years, and turn it around to only show the clean, smooth side for the second act. This would represent how the shop is becoming more successful and he is able to afford to fix and replace parts as more money comes into the business.

My next step was to construct the end pieces that would cap the top and bottom of the structure and form the link to the frame, whilst keeping the tube its self free.

Here you can see what I used to construct the end pieces of the pole. I wanted them to have quite an unusual and radical design. As the setting is steampunk, victorian era I thought they would have quite an ornate but elaborate shape/design to them that explained to the audience this is not a standard, period set production (as will be reflected in the costumes). Once again I have used plant pots, coffe cups, and whatever else I could find budget free to work with. You'll notice also that in the second picture the tube has been sprayed white in advance of being painted.

For the next stage of development I was back in the uni workshop, here I used a jigsaw to carve the ornate frame work for the piece which would bridge the caps of the pole with the back board of the structure. My time in Lewes working with a jigsaw (as well as many other tools) gave me alot of confidence in carving quite a complex structure and as much as I had improved with using tools I still struggled to achieve the desired shapes I was after. However, I was happy with what I achieved, which you can see below.

The assembled frame work.

Having finished cutting out the wooden section of the structure and sanding it down my next move was to make sure the bonds between the wood were completely solid as they would be taking the weight of the pole. Below you can see how I both glued and screwed the pieces together before assembling all of the pieces I add so far constructed.

The Barber's pole was really starting to take shape by this point and, as complex as it had been to make, I was really surprised by how quickly I knocked the whole thing together. Originally I had thought the barber's pole would be too complex and too much work but as it turned out I had managed to build it in a very short space of time. I suppose this was due to the fact I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do before hand and how to go about it.

I realised that once the frame work was attached to the caps of the pole it would be difficult to remove the main pole section again, my next move therefore was to paint the pole and get it out of the way so I could focus on securing the whole structure together and cladding it.

Using a strip of paper I had cut out I began to draw out the stripped lines that flow all the way down the pole, moving the piece of paper down the tube as I drew it out. Once I had finished this it wa time to paint the red stripe down the tube.

Here you can see the pole section completed. With this part of the structure now finished I could place it within the caps and begin attaching the structure together properly so it would hold its shape well when placed upright. I was really surprised by how bright and striking the colours of the pole where, making it really stand out. Although at the time I considered this section of the piece completed I may go back if there is time and dull down the colours on the broken side, so the transition betwen acts is more apparent and in keeping with the style of it being old and delapidated on one side, and new and clean on the other. Which I think will be a nice touch to the show. Below You can all the pieces I had constructed so far finall coming together. Now the pole was sitting within the caps t either end my next thought was how i would go about securing them to the wodeen frame work...

One of the first ideas I tried out was to first secure the pieces in place with masking and LX tape, and them papier mache over the top. The problem with this was as the wood had not been cut at an angle on the ends, the slopes of the caps wouldn't sit happily in them.

My next idea was to clad the caps in card as I had planned and secure that to the structure instead, this proved betteer but still not satisfactory. As I had not settled on a design for the caps I began to cut strips of card into random shapes to give the idea it had been clad in sheets of metal, giving an industrail, obscure look.

Here you can see how I started to build the surface detail for the caps of the pole. Although I wasn't particularly happy with it I left it for the mean time. As you can see in the photo only one side has been clad in card. For the other end, the top, I wanted something that was more of a decorative finish, I had imagined that the tube was spiralling up to something special, some sort of design. But for the time this concluded my work on the barber's pole as I had other commitements to be getting on with.