Scenic Design help

[Quinton Champitto]

So my high school is putting on the musical "Working", and the design we are going for is suppose to look very rustic with pipes and scaffolding everywhere. Our director doesn't like the idea of having a railing on the stairs because it won't look right, but fire code insist all stairs above 4 feet must have railings. So how do I make a pipe-ish/rusty railing.

My current idea is two inch dowel rods, but I think it would still look too much like a railing.

 

[rbalewski]

You can actually make railings out of 1 1/4 inch iron pipe with things like this:

http://www.mscdirect.com/browse/tn/...?searchterm=pro-safe+railing&navid=4287924145

They work great. I used similar connectors to put up a stairwell railing in my garage and it definitely looks cool!

Ron

PS I designed a production of Working a number of years ago and it's still probably my favorite show!

 

[rochem]

My first thought would be to use some 1" pipe with Kee clamps to form the railing (see below). Bonus points that it'll be cheap and easy to construct. You can play around with scenic treatments depending on your set.

Alternatively, one of the times that I've done this show, we integrated some elements of real scaffolding into the set, including some stairs like the second image below. I believe ours were steeper (more like ship's ladders), but that worked for the action that our actors needed to do.