At The Technical Production Services Association (TPSA) Awards held in Cape Town, Stage Front’s Charl Terblanche was named Set Designer of the Year. The awards took place on 7 October 2010 at Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC).

 Terblanche was busy on an event so wasn’t able to collect his prize in person. He isn’t sure which job secured him the award, but he’s grateful to the industry for acknowledging his work.

Mark Matthysen started Stage Front two years ago. Terblanche joined after earning his stripes as set manager at Just Sets.

Since opening, the company’s biggest set to date was last year’s Loerie Awards, which essentially transformed The Good Hope Centre inside and out.

Terblanche says they decided against servicing the awards for a second year because of two other big events happening at the same time. 

It’s not only staging that keeps him busy. Terblanche says Stage Front have started building shop fittings as well, which when you think about it, is nothing more than a permanent set.

One of the most challenging jobs this year was a three-tiered seating stand for The Good Food and Wine Show in Johannesburg. “It was a particularly difficult job because of the constant changes we had to implement,” says Terblanche. “An additional challenge was that we had to design a set that could be dismantled easily so we could use it again and again.”

The oval-shaped stand had to seat appromiximately 300 people. Terblanche started with a scale drawing of the basic structure that had to be as accurate as possible. “If you’re out on your measurements, you’re in trouble”, he says. 

The stand was built in Cape Town, which meant the separate components had to be simple enough in structure to allow for travel. “We constructed  standard stage pieces of 1.2 and 2.4 metres for the basic structure and designed and constructed custom pieces to join onto them to create the oval shape of the entire stand,” says Terblanche.

After being used at the Cape Town show, the stands travelled to Johannesburg and will soon hit the road again to be used at The Good Food and Wine Show in Durban.

Another big event that could have bagged the TPSA award for Terblanche was his part of the  work on the stage for the new Apostolic Church Ministry set, which  took place in mid-May at CTICC. 

He designed a massive wall that stretched for the length of the hall.  “This was a logistical problem we had to solve because we had to lift a wall stretching 16 metres by 10 metres high with one 4.5 metre screen in the centre and four smaller screens along the sides.”

The wall was too heavy to lift so Terblanche solved the problem by splitting it in two. He and his teams lifted the top half first, mounted the screens, then constructed  the bottom half  of the wall below it. “It was one of the most challenging height wise sets we’ve ever done,” he says.  He adds that no set is complete without the professional touch of lighting technicians and engineers.

For more information, click here.