Rumors Set

My senior year of high school, I had the opportunity to design and build a set for York Suburban Trojan Theatre’s production of Our Town by Neil Simon. The show is set in a grand 1980s mansion, and I was tasked with capturing this aesthetic. With input from our other student leaders and faculty directors, I designed the set from the description provided by the script and a number of reference photos we found from other productions of this farce.

After settling on the style and layout, I made a detailed 2D layout of the set in Fusion 360. From there, I expanded the model into 3D to plan the actual construction of the set. From this structural model, I made drawings to use when constructing the set.

The design work was not done all at once, but overlapped somewhat with construction as the schedule was quite tight. Once deciding on an initial floor-plan, I designed the framing for the walls, and from there we began construction. I led a team of 6 other students for the construction, working from the plans I generated and parallelizing the process as much as possible to finish before the show. Alongside this construction work, I continued to design the details of the set, laying out the stairs, entry-window, and banisters so that once the walls were complete we moved on to these details.

Overall, I managed to get the project finished on time and was very satisfied with the results, especially considering it was my first time taking on a project of this magnitude. Building from my own drawings with other people quickly taught me the importance of clear dimensioning, and I learned to balance my team across construction, painting, and other details in order to reduce bottlenecks. The cast was thrilled with the final result, and it was an incredible learning opportunity.