In The Heights: Set Technical Design
For our Spring 2013 musical, my high school performed In The Heights. The responsibility of set design was given to the stagecraft class, which was 14 students, if I remember correctly, including myself. The show called for a set that included the facades of four buildings- the Rosario's taxi dispatch booth, Abuela's apartment and stoop, Usnavi's bodega corner store, and Daniela's salon, from stage left to stage right respectively. The concept that our director proposed to us was that each façade was to unfold like a Swiss Army Knife to reveal their interiors. You could also think of it as working like a full sized folding style Barbie playhouse. I took responsibility for designing and leading construction for the ways that each of the buildings achieved these unfolding actions.
The following is a model I built based on the ideas I ultimately came up with for the four units. From stage left to stage right, the dispatch would work by flipping around vertically, Abuela's apartment would slide out with a pair of walls which would fold open, the bodega would spin in place, and the front wall of the salon would fold open and allow the interior to slide out. The dispatch also had a platform that slid out in the same way that the salon platform slid out. This is not shown in the model.
The platforms for each of the units were integrated with the sidewalk, as shown by the model.
Now, let's take a look at each of these four units, starting with stage left, the much less complicated side. There’s not much to explain about the bodega or salon, just take look!
Bodega
Salon
Abuela’s Apartment
Stage right was trickier. The mechanisms for opening the two facades were both more complicated, and they were complicated further because they overlapped each other backstage when they both were in the closed position.
Unfortunately, I no longer have the scale drawings, but these illustrations serve sufficiently. As it shows, the upstage left corner of the dispatch platform is cut off by the stage right corner of Abuela's apartment.
The quick solution to that issue was to simply cut off that corner of the dispatch, as we did. With this setup, Abuela's apartment had no problem doing its thing.
Abuela's two apartment walls, when backstage, are folded together. The stage left wall is fixed to the platform, and the stage right wall is hinged to the other wall on the upstage end so that it may swing open into place. Because of the position of the hinge and the presence of wall dressings, they were unable to close completely together. There is a disguised brick door that covers the gap that the pair of walls comes through, indicated by the thick red line. This door is held closed by a pair of bungee cords, indicated by the dashed red line.
To fold the swinging wall to the open and closed positions from backstage, there are two ropes, indicated by the dashed teal lines, which can each be pulled to operate the wall. One of the ropes simply runs backstage and is pulled to open the wall. The other rope is ran to a pulley inside of the fixed wall, and then it runs through the wall to backstage. This rope is pulled to close the wall. Both ropes run discreetly along the floor of Abuela's apartment.
Dispatch
The dispatch was the tricky one. There were two main problems. First, when the 19 foot tall wall spins, it would hit the stage right corner of Abuela's apartment backstage. Second, the act of spinning this wall created a gaping hole in the set through which the audience would be able to see directly backstage.
To solve this pair of problems, I needed to figure out how to achieve a sort of "spinning space" for the dispatch wall. This would be a completely empty space backstage at least ten feet deep and with the width of the wall in which the wall could spin. It would need to be covered on all sides in black to prevent the audience's sight from reaching farther backstage.
To solve the first problem, I simply cut off the interfering part of Abuela's apartment. Instead of being attached to the main platform, it would be connected to the backstage exit stairs, which would be on a separate platform of their own. This way, when Abuela's apartment was needed, the stairs would be connected to Abuela's platform using coffin locks and Abuela's apartment would be complete. When the dispatch needed to be flipped, the stairs, with the removable corner of Abuela's apartment, would be detached and rolled elsewhere backstage.
To allow the removable corner of Abuela's apartment to bear the weight required, I made notches in Abuela's platform's frame which the corner piece connected into. This allowed weight on the hypotenuse edge of the corner piece to be transferred to Abuela's platform, while the other two sides were supported by the stairs themselves, and vertical beams that extended down to Abuela's lower platform. This is highlighted in the image above on the right.
To solve the second problem and define that spinning space, I primarily used curtains. The second traveler was very conveniently positioned, so I used that as the upstage wall of the box. The stage right wall was handled partly by a painted black wall and partly by a short curtain. The stage left curtain pulled double duty. It was able to swing on a pivot so that, when swung upstage, as shown above on the right, it defined the stage left side of the spinning space, and when swung to an upstage right angle, as shown above on the left, it prevented the audience from seeing through the dispatch window into backstage when the dispatch is flipped into exterior mode.
The dispatch platform, which had on it the dispatch desk, was pushed out and pulled in from its upstage side by an operator with a long pushing stick that was attached to the platform. The length of the pushing stick helped the operator to not be seen by the audience.
For the flipping itself, I used ropes attached to the upper end of the wall when it was in exterior mode. These ropes led into a pulley system which offered a mechanical advantage of six. This allowed me to lift the wall slowly, with control, and without much difficulty. I did this in the small hollow area to the stage right side of the dispatch, which I made my cozy cave. It featured a black cloth window, through which I could monitor the wall as I flipped it without being seen myself by the audience. It also had a small hatch that I could open to finely position the wall by hand as I inserted the pin which held it in place.
I also kept a stash of emergency supplies, including drills, screws of all sorts, flash lights, gaff tape, and staplers. It was a nice cozy cave.
