Friday, 12 February 2016

Westpac Stadium stages replica Edinburgh Castle for tattoo



It is looking Edinburgh Castle is right at home in Wellington's Westpac Stadium despite a long way from windy hills of Scotland. The Royal Military Edinburgh Tattoo comes to the town next week but a scale replica facade of the medieval castle needs to be built inside the stadium before 1200 performers join next Tuesday to rehearse for four nights of performance. A number of 60 people were working from 7am to 10pm each day to construct the castle which must be completed by lunch time on Sunday. Technical director Nick Kyle said 1200 sheets of plywood were used to make the castle.

 
A father-and-son team of scenic artists Kelvin and Louis Guy, who were brought over from the Scottish Opera hand-painted 90% of the panels. They got walls of the castle just right by working six days a week for two months. Kyle described it was a really nice challenge to set up a castle on a sports ground. He said it was a good experience to unite a bunch of really different people together like scaffolders because they do not do this kind of job, as they do buildings. He agreed building a castle on a sports pitch offered a few challenges.


He said we have to take care of the turf because we have to lay down 40 millimeters of ply any time we move anything like to drive a forklift anywhere. Kyle said they wrapped everything in plastic at the end of each night to protect it from the sprinklers needed to keep the turf fresh. Kyle seemed relaxed about the job ahead despite the intensity of the task facing him and his team where they are coordinating 1200 people with working out lights,sounds and fireworks.

0 comments:

Post a Comment