Technical Design Solutions for Theatre

Rob Kovarik

Whalers — Low-Profile Stiffeners for Steel-Framed Flats

The set for a Yale School of Drama production of The Golem included two hard-covered wall sections, both 32′-0″ wide. One of them was 16′ tall and was dead hung 12′ off the deck. The other was 12′ tall and designed to fly just downstage of the first. To minimize the wall sections’ weight we framed the flats with 1″ × 0.065″ square tube. To keep the assembled walls as flat and as thin as possible, we stiffened them with whalers — steel versions of a hogs trough. As tube steel framing has become more common, theater shops the world over have developed their own styles of whalers. Those we used for The Golem are detailed in Figure 1.

FIGURE 1: THE GOLEM WHALER

Whalers like these ...