Portsmouth business builds theatrical sets for arts groups world-wide

By Jim Washington

The Virginian-Pilot

PORTSMOUTH

Electrician Chris Parsons hunches over a paint-stained work table, his hands thrust deep inside a foam pumpkin.

At first, plans called for these pumpkins to be solid, three-dimensional pieces of stage scenery. Then, the client wanted them flat. Next the pumpkins needed to be hollow. And, they had to light up from inside with an orange glow.

No problem.

Making magic is part of the job for the crew at Virginia Scenic Group, a company that builds theatrical sets in a sprawling Port Norfolk warehouse.

For more than 20 years, the company has made sets for shows around the world, including an off-Broadway "Phantom of the Opera," traveling adaptations of "SpongeBob SquarePants," "Clifford the Big Red Dog" and "Dora the Explorer" for Nickelodeon and opera companies in Atlanta, Baltimore, Texas and Hawaii.

It finished sets earlier this year for a "Cinderella" production scheduled to tour Asia. The $300,000-plus project was one of its largest since owner Joy Callan took over the company last year.

The sets came into one end of the 60,000-square-foot warehouse as truckloads of plywood, metal and fabric in late March. Eight weeks later at the other end of the building, the crew loaded an enchanted wonderland, broken down into thousands of brightly colored pieces, onto three tractor trailers.

In those weeks the crew sewed, painted, welded, cut, hammered, sawed, glued, drilled and hung material to bring the world of Cinderella to life. They created carriages, castles, flowering trees, a painted glass slipper, movable stairs, a palace clock that strikes midnight and a patch of those magic, glowing pumpkins.

 

Gravel crunches as Callan and the crew pull their pickups into the Virginia Scenic parking lot one April afternoon after a few rounds of Frisbee golf.

Callan, 30, started working at Virginia Scenic on her 18th birthday because her father worked there, and she's pretty much been there ever since. Last year she bought the business from longtime owner Robert Minnick.

Plopping down at a cluttered desk, she says: "Honestly, I'd rather be out there building."

The crew has built more than a dozen sets since she took over, a few on a similar scale to "Cinderella." Seven full-time employees and 20 part-timers will work on the "Cinderella" build.

It's a close-knit group of artists, carpenters, welders, painters, seamstresses and friends who break up the long days and late nights with rounds of Frisbee golf and jamming in the warehouse music room.

"You can be working 10 feet away from someone all day and barely talk," Callan says. "Then after work you sit down and have a beer and it's like, 'Hey, how are you doing?' "

Callan usually works in a baseball cap, paint-stained T-shirt and cargo pants - a pretty typical uniform for the crew. She often has a cup of coffee or a cigarette or both in hand. Belle, her big, floppy-eared sheep dog, greets visitors with an enthusiastic sniff.

After Virginia Scenic bid for "Cinderella," the client, a company called Broadway Asia, sent detailed plans outlining its needs, including a dollhouse-sized model of the entire set. Callan keeps in touch with the client throughout the build with frequent phone calls and e-mails.

Workers come and go through Callan's office all day, checking on what needs to be done next and trading updates.

Next door to Callan's office, in the sewing room, a sea of blue velour washes around Emme Greer. She heads up the "soft goods" department, or the fabrics that make up backdrops and screens. Her daughter, Morgan, who's in kindergarten, hangs out with her after school.

Greer, a small woman with intense eyes and stylish granny glasses, works mostly by herself. ("I don't work and play well with others.") She cuts, rips and sews large swaths of fabric while the soothing tones of NPR'S Terry Gross murmur in the background. Making dresses for drag queens sparked Greer's interest in costume design, which she later studied at Florida State University.

The company bought about 1,650 yards of blue velour for "Cinderella." The bundles can weigh more than 100 pounds.

"That's why I go to a massage therapist every week," Greer says.

As she finishes each piece, Greer stuffs the material into wheeled carts and hauls it down a hallway to the paint shop, where artists add a little sparkle.

In the paint shop, an open space with enough room for two 60-by-28-foot backdrops to be stretched out on the floor, head painter Christie Marcley dabs orange paint onto the roofs of a small village. The scene, drawn on white fabric, would be cut out to hang at the back of the stage. Marcley, a scenery painter for more than 20 years, then works with painter Julie Potter to lay down subtle gradations of white stripes on a backdrop, creating a ripple effect on the blue fabric.

"We're a good team," Marcley says.

A painting of a glass slipper looms over them, done in silver dye on a black background so it gleams under the lights. Soon the slipper would be attached to the backdrop on the floor.

"Wait until you see it all put together," Marcley says.

 

About halfway through the build the crew is on schedule, maybe even a little ahead, but it hasn't been easy.

"It's crazy," Callan says, sitting in her office on a late Friday afternoon, a cold beer within reach. Two small children run through giggling while Belle lounges on the floor and a couple of ferrets pace in a cage. "They keep adding stuff and changing stuff, but, so far, so good."

There's no way the additions can be done at the same time as everything else, so Greer plan s to finish them later and ship them by plane. The rest of the set will go by boat. The set will return in a year so they can modify it for a U.S. tour.

"We keep getting paid for this show. I love it," Callan says.

At the other end of the warehouse, metal and wood workers are in the home stretch of of their duties, cutting out the shapes to be painted and adorned. It's intricate work, with plans laid out on a computer, then cut by a router.

Standing among half-completed set pieces, John Marc-ley, Christie's brother, and Brian Shuler paint a fiberglass castle taller than themselves. John Marcley is a Hurricane Katrina refugee and a musician. He works in the company's office, leads the jam sessions and pitches in where needed.

"Everyone is very independent," he says. "It works because it's lots of people working in concert, one piece going into another piece."

Pushing his paintbrush into a castle crevice, Shuler says the crew rarely gets to see the sets come together onstage, although sometimes they will go see the shows if they come through Hampton Roads. "The cool thing is to see people's reactions," he says. "The reason I do this is to make people happy."

After work everyone gathers in a back room to jam, with John Marcley on drums and keyboards, Callan on bass and others singing and playing guitar. It's extremely loose and gets looser as the evening goes on.

"We just jam," Callan says. "We start out trying to play a song, but it doesn't really work out that way."

 

With a couple of weeks to go, the fairy tale is taking shape. What had been blocks of fiberglass and sheets of wood and metal have become a stone hearth and a carriage with people inside.

The bigger pieces needing work include a staircase landing, a chandelier and the clock.

The largest piece, a metal platform that must hold heavy scenery as well as actors, had to be adjusted 7 inches because the client sent the wrong specifications.

"They can't get all on the same page with what they want to do," Callan says with a sigh. "I'd like to be a little more comfortable with the time frame."

It doesn't help that they are about to lose lead painter Christie Marcley for a scheduled weeklong vacation.

"What can I do, tell her not to go?" Callan says.

In the sewing room Greer remains hip-deep in blue velour, a color she now calls pureed Smurf. "You can't believe how sick of it I am," she says.

Chris Parsons, a former bassist and sound man who handles electrical work for the company, is starting on the palace clock, designed to stand about 10 feet tall and light up when the hands strike midnight. First he rigs up a contraption using a garage door opener and a bike chain to make the hands move. But that moves too fast, so he tries a hospital bed mechanism.

"We always have a fallback plan," he says.

 

As the build nears completion, the crew endures a week of late nights and early mornings to finish the large set elements. Then come the final touches - painting the pumpkins orange, adding some lighting and building the boxes that will carry the set pieces across the ocean.

"Now, we're in delirium," says painter Julie Potter, pushing a cart full of paint cans.

"We're just making sure we have a place for everything and that there's not a square inch that's not painted," Callan says, watching over everything. "We don't like for any bare wood to go out of here."

The show's technical director, Noah Kern, is now working with the crew. He would be traveling with "Cinderella" to the Philippines, Korea, Singapore, Thailand and China to make sure the set is put together correctly.

Walking through the warehouse, Kern stops to admire the magic pumpkins.

First, the crew had carved the pumpkin shapes out of foam, a little more than a foot tall and about 2 1/2 feet wide. Then, after the client wanted them hollow, Callan applied acid inside and scooped out the resulting mess. Artists used a special paint to let light shine through.

Then, to make it illuminate, Parsons lined the inside with string lights and rigged switches to make them shine or pulse on demand, and added handles.

When black-clad actors hold them up against a dark background, it will look like the fiery pumpkins are floating.

"You pull from all these departments and all these people and all this expertise and - boom - you have a magic pumpkin," Kern says.

 

On load-out day the crew starts at 9 a.m. and goes hard all day. By midafternoon they have loaded two of the three container trucks. Everyone pitches in, along with some hired muscle. Callan drives a forklift while Greer staples fake flowers to create Cinderella's bouquet. People snatch quick bites from boxes of Hardee's fried chicken in the break room.

"We're pushing it a little bit," Callan says.

As the minutes tick away, everyone waits for the truck driver to switch out a loaded trailer for an empty one.

"Is he here?" Callan asks. "I hope he's here."

When the driver arrives, he tells Callan the shipyard will be open a little later than they thought. With some breathing room, the tension loosens. Greer picks up a cat puppet and chases her daughter and Belle around the break room.

Shuler shows up with the makings of the traditional post-build cookout, including marinated chicken, potato salad and a star-shaped chocolate cake.

"Because everyone here's a star," he jokes.

Cases of beer fill two break room refrigerators.

The warehouse slowly empties as the crew stuffs everything into the last truck. A worker wraps the magic pumpkins in blankets and puts them into a box, and onto the truck they go.

"Time is not good!" someone yells.

With a few moments to spare before 5 p.m., workers stow the loading ramp inside the truck and slam down the door, and the "Cinderella" set rumbles off to the shipyard, to the ocean and to the other side of the world.

Callan stands on the loading dock, waving her arms at the departing truck and trading high fives with everyone.

"Bye! So long, Cinderella!"

Soon the music comes on and the grill starts smoking and everyone gathers around a picnic table, talking, laughing and thinking ahead. The next week, Virginia Scenic would start work on three more builds.

"OK," Greer says. "What's next?"

Jim Washington, (757) 446-2536, jim.washington@pilotonline.com