Backdrops painted flat on the floor

The shed is three hundred square metres of old cold-store floor in Salt River, with a paint frame down one wall and enough room to lay out a twelve by nine cloth without folding it once. Three of us work here full time and we take on casuals when a season lands on top of us.

We prime, paint, dye, flame-proof and deliver on our own bakkie, because the last thing you want is a stranger folding a finished cloth. Fifteen years in, most of the work is still theatre. The rest is opera, schools touring, and film sets that want a painted sky rather than a screen.