I’ve been following the Les Miserables tour around the UK for 2019. Now in 2020 they’re back in London at the reopening of the stunning Sondheim Theatre. It was great fun decorating the Ham Yard hotel and creating this crazy massive bunch for the stairs.
We helium filled 2000 x 12″ balloons. We were working in the Bowling Alley in the basement and placed bunches in all the surrounding rooms.
The large organic bunch in the stairway consisted of between 800 to 1000 balloons. We didn’t use crazy long ribbons to build this, we used short ribbons and tied them in at each level. Starting with the top bunch we added multiple sections of 30 at each level going higher & higher. At the halfway point I added in some 500lb nylon line as I felt there was too much pull & the ribbons may break. The whole thing was tied to 4 boxes of star weights which surprisingly gave a solid foundation.
Previous post (2018): The Les Miserables tour has started and the 3 installation were in Leicester, Dublin and Edinburgh. Nothing fancy here just lots of bunches to deliver the fun factor on press night.
For similar helium theatre bunches see Red Shoes.