It is often the case that a set which seemlessly supports and compliments the tone of the action playing out on it can be invaluable to a production. Bearing this in mind the Workshop is one of the most important departments in any theatre. It is their responsibility to build the set and bring the designer's vision to life. All of the Citz productions are built on site by a dedicated team of carpenters, welders and builders. Jamie Hayes is Head of Stage and has worked at the Citz for 5years having previously worked at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket and the Prince Edward Theatre.
What are you working on at the moment?We're working on Stuart Laing’s The Maids. It’s coming along very well but it’s quite a tough engineering challenge. Essentially, Stuart wants a cloth to come in at the start of the show at a certain speed and then truck all the way upstage and then go back out again. And this cloth moves in orientations up and down at certain points. Its very unusual that you’ll get a cloth that comes in and then has to move when it’s in position. It sounds relatively easy to do but it’s not. When you consider that you’ve got lots of lighting bars. We usually have about six or eight or even ten lighting bars so how do you float something through that? It’s a tougher engineering challenge than it sounds. It’s a bit of a head scratcher. The Citz being the way it is, a Victorian theatre, it doesn’t allow you to do the things that you could normally do in other theatres. In a modern theatre you could do that pretty simply. You just have to think your way around it. So that’s what we are doing at the moment.
Could you describe an average day in the Workshop?It’s kind of tied heavily in with the process. Usually with a production you get the plans and a model. Our usual build period is three weeks. As we are coming out of production on one show we will get the drawings for the next, which means you can order all the timber, look at it and cost the show...so when you come in on a Monday morning all the timbers in. Dennis, whose the master carpenter, will usually have done drawings for the lads so he just passes out the drawings to them and the chippies go away and build it. You get your drawings...and you go off and take what you need. You will have a pile of pre cut timber of all different sizes and then you construct it. Average day goes from drawing, to cutting to producing.
How do you find working at the Citz?I like it very much simply because you have a workshop so close to the stage. Once we get on to stage, there’s constantly bits you have to fabricate. The designer might say, "actually I’d like another piece of flat there, I’d like something here, I’d like something there". In other theatre’s they have workshops pretty much a mile away from the stage, so you have to go all the way back to the workshop which causes all sorts of problems. Here, from a designer saying they want something, we can have it on the stage in two hours. But there’s a downside to that because a designer will factor that into it. So they will always have something cookie or zanie to throw at you because they know the workshops right there.
How did you get started?It was always around...when I was young and I did amateur dramatics as a child so I knew a bit about theatre. My wife and I moved to London about 20 years ago, because we were sick and tired of Edinburgh, and I thought what am I going to do in London? Someone said to me the best theatre in London is the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, without a doubt if you ever go to a theatre you want to go there, so I just bit the bullet and in the morning I went to speak to the master carpernter and said ‘listen, Im interested. I like theatre and I only really know Theatre’ and he said ‘right start tomorrow morning. I’ll teach you everything I need to know". So I pretty much walked through the door not knowing a thing about it, not knowing how to pick up a hammer. Amazingly this guy let me in and that was it, boom! Started. Worked there for 8 years.
How many theatre's have you worked in?A lot of theatre in london. The nature of London is, as soon as you get to know people down there and work with all the visiting companies and producers, you get phone calls all the time asking if you want to come and work in such and such theatre. So, all though I was based in one theatre I did a lot of freelance work in all the others. Pretty much every theatre in London, bar a few, I worked in at one time or another.
What advice would you give to someone looking to go down this career path?My advice would be: prepare to work long hours for average money, if that’s your passion in life, don’t even think about, just go for it. If you want to be involved in theatre, just go for it. If that’s what you’re interested in then it’s a very fulfilling job. You've got to be prepared to think on your feet constantly and to work, and work, and work, and work, and work. Don’t expect to be at home too much and get on with it.
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