Build 2019: Day 3

By Giles Moss on July 27th

Friday 26th July 2019

No new venues today.. almost.

Yesterday we started the build for Grand and Theatres 1, 2 & 3 at theSpace @ Surgeons' Hall, and the Upper and Lower theatres at theSpace @ Niddry St. Our build plans this year have us spending two days in each venue. The first day has the whole crew in, going in almost mob-handed to tip the trucks and get the venues' build underway. The second day has half the crew - only those we've assigned to work in the particular venue(s) we're building. The other half the crew has a day off. So yesterday we finished at around 7 PM, roughly halfway through the builds. Things looked surprisingly unfinished, but after a second day today, we've got the spaces completed to the point of final snagging - we have Monday put aside for that.

The Surgeons Grand is starting to look like a theatre:

As are Theatres 1, 2 & 3. Here's Theatre 2:

Mark, our IT guy, spent the day building box offices, patching access points into comms rooms and getting some of our departure boards going:

Over at Niddry Street, our two theatres are similarly complete - but I didn't manage to get over there to take any photos! Will try harder tomorrow.

Other achievements today inluded:

- The new box office shed at theSpace @ Surgeons' Hall is coming along, we should be able to rig the box office in there in a day or two.

- We handed over our new Lister theatres from the venue owners, and rigged some WiFi access points. Always handy to be able to get online during the build, which kicks off tomorrow mid-morning. We also forgot how exciting this build is going to be - it's been a few years since we took over a brand new building!

- The IT build has started in theSpace on the Mile's production office. This should be finished tomorrow.

- We have discovered two big baby seaguls are nesting near the Surgeons' courtyard. They've been spotted trying to come into the venue, perhaps they want to see a show (they're a bit early..).

Oh, and this afternoon we got access to our venues at theSpace on North Bridge. Another significant truck tip, but only with a skeleton crew as the venue's own team were on their day off. We used some local crew to help us load in, then the senior team got the truss up in advance of the main build tomorrow.

Tomorrow we kick the build off on another set of venues - TEN venues in fact.. it's going to be a busy one!