I Don't Hide Seams. I Give Them a Job.

I’ll admit right up front that I am probably not the person you want teaching a master class on the perfect dutchman.

I hate hiding seams.

I’ve always hated hiding seams.

If I can possibly avoid making a joint disappear, I will. My first instinct is almost always to design it into the set instead.

Chair rail. Baseboard. A batten. Some kind of molding. Anything that makes architectural sense and gives that seam a reason to be there.

Because if I wanted the wall to look like one perfectly clean, continuous surface, I probably should have built it that way in the first place.

And if it’s supposed to be an old wall? Even better.

That’s when I stop trying to hide anything.

I’ll thin down some paint and let a drip run right along the joint. I’ll draw in a crack with a Sharpie. Add some dirt. Maybe a little mildew. Suddenly the seam isn’t a construction problem anymore. It’s part of a wall that has supposedly been sitting there for forty years.

And nobody is looking at the joint anymore.

They’re looking at the disgusting mold I just drew on the scenery with a marker.

Which, somehow, feels like a win.

So if you’re standing at the back of the house staring at that little vertical stripe where two flats meet, I completely understand.

I’ve been there.

I’ve also been the person who looked at it and thought, “Fine. You live there now.”

That said, this is not always the correct answer.

Sometimes you really do need the seam to disappear. Sometimes it’s a clean modern interior. Sometimes adding a chair rail would make absolutely no sense. Sometimes the director probably does not want a giant crack running through the living room wall because you got tired of fighting a dutchman.

Fair enough.

This is also me admitting that actually hiding seams properly is something I could stand to get better at.

What the audience is actually seeing

Most of the time, the problem isn’t the colour.

It’s the surface.

There might be a tiny ridge of glue. The paper might have a slightly different texture. Maybe the edge of the dutchman is sitting proud of the wall. Maybe you stippled around it to blend the repair and accidentally created a big fuzzy stripe.

Then the light hits it from the side and suddenly that little difference in texture becomes a bright vertical line.

And now that’s all you can see.

A good rule is that if you can feel the edge with your fingernail, there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to see it from the house.

Especially once somebody starts hanging lighting at an angle you did not plan for.

The version I should probably practise more

When I actually try to do this properly, the process is pretty simple.

Use paper, not packing tape.

Brown paper tape works. Newspaper works. Anything shiny is just creating another problem because now you’re fighting sheen as well as the seam.

Thin the glue enough that it soaks into the paper instead of sitting on top of it.

Brush from the middle out and work the bubbles away.

Once it dries, check the edges. If you can catch an edge with your fingernail, you still have a ridge.

Knock it down carefully.

Then match the texture that already exists on the wall.

If the wall was rolled, roll it. If it was stomped, stomp it. The big mistake is creating a completely different texture around the seam in an attempt to “blend” it.

Now you’ve just made the repair larger.

And when it comes time to paint, paint the wall.

Not the seam.

If you keep painting a vertical stripe over the repair, eventually you are just building a very well-painted vertical stripe.

Use the same paint, the same reduction and the same tool you used on the rest of the wall.

A lot of the time, the colour was never the problem.

Soft-covered scenery is a slightly different animal because the fabric moves.

Paper sitting over a flexible surface can telegraph differently, especially if the muslin is still shrinking or moving around. That’s one of those situations where timing matters. If the skin is still changing, adding a repair over it immediately can create a whole new problem.

And sometimes I still cheat

There is also a point where you have to admit that paint is not going to fix the construction.

If two stiles aren’t sitting in the same plane, no amount of dutchman work is going to make that wall look flat.

Shim it.

Rehang it.

Fix the framing.

Or, if the design allows it, put something there that belongs there.

A dutchman can hide a seam in the skin. It cannot straighten the wall behind it.

And if the wall is old, dirty, damaged, industrial, basement-y, abandoned, haunted, or anything else that gives me permission to cheat?

I am probably reaching for the Sharpie.

Cracks. Drips. Dirt. Trim.

Whatever gives that seam a job.

I’m not saying that’s always the technically perfect solution.

I’m saying theatre is full of situations where the thing that looks right from forty feet away is more important than proving that I know how to make two sheets of lauan apologize to each other.

But the next time I build a nice clean interior and the seam really does need to vanish, I’m going to resist the urge to immediately invent a chair rail.

Probably.

I’ll at least check whether a chair rail would look good first.

Behold, my faults on display!

I hid some of these, but not that darn middle one. Sue me :)