My home has had problems with water just recently. There has been a huge leak in the second bedroom that has gone on since before Lock-down. The landlords have put scaffolding up and done works to address a range of issues meeting the demands of current housing acts. At the moment it is a store room and it is hoped that once everything is sorted, we’ll be able to make the place all right again. Perhaps it won’t be a decade before the hole in the ceiling is sorted.
Dr. Griffith’s Red Bull book: A Jacobean Company and its Playhouse is over a decade old.
I remember 2013 being important to this book. I remember the book launches. I should – they cost me a lot of money. But I liked putting on these events.
It turns out scaffolding is very important to theatre history. Thinking about it, actors, or the groups of people around them, were compelled to build those things quite a lot.
James Burbage, who built the first purpose-built playhouse in the London area, was an actor, yes, but he was a builder first. A carpenter of sorts. His son, Richard, also became an actor, and went on to create the roles of characters like Richard III and Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. This, one assumes, was very much on the back of his father’s ability to build an entertainment venue. Topics such as this figure in my screenplay about the actors at the Red Bull playhouse, with the working title it has of In A Garden.
Re. scaffolding and leaks: for years I thought that when Henry Seckford, the Tudor Master of the Tents, Toils, Hales and Pavilions (don’t ask) had to use some of his tents in his Hall in relation to some leak problems of his own, he was gumming up the holes with canvas.
Now I realise something different is more likely to have happened.
More another day, maybe tomorrow! For now, adios amigos! I am now a member of BECTU, and will be registering my scripts with their Script Registry. So hands off!
Thank you.
(Red Bull book link)
Cool article! Always interesting to hear stories about scaffolders—where I’m from in Auckland, the crews are pretty much the same, always juggling tight spaces and crazy weather. Gotta have your gear down pat, like lanyards and guardrails, before you even step up. And yeah, talking and checking things before starting the day helps heaps. Nice work sharing this!