Philip Parsons, inventor of the Steeldeck platform and founder of the Steeldeck companies, died at St Mary’s Hospital on Tuesday 20 October after a long battle with prostate cancer. He was 81.
Phil studied physics but made his career in theatre. After working in theatres as a technician, he started his scenery company, PL Parsons and Company, at the back of Hampstead Theatre. As it grew, the company moved to a warehouse in King’s Cross, making scenery for a generation of London productions, from Sunset Boulevard to The Wind in the Willows and An Inspector Calls.
In the 1980s, frustrated by the waste of rebuilding stages from plywood for every production, he and his team designed a better rostrum. The result was Steeldeck: a steel-framed, plywood-topped platform cut to the size of a standard ply sheet so nothing was wasted. Strong enough to outperform many concrete floors, and simple enough for any crew to build with scaffold-tube legs, it was launched at the ABTT: Association of British Theatre Technicians Theatre Show in 1986. Before long the old folding rostra were nearly obsolete.
The robust, innately sustainable design has changed little in forty years. “Steeldeck” is now the industry’s word for a staging platform. Phil was quietly proud that not one platform had ever come back for faulty manufacture.
He never stopped inventing and went on to design auditorium and retractable seating systems, built to last a lifetime. Phil stayed hands-on with major projects to the end, including Soho Place, the first new West End theatre in half a century, and Starlight Express at the Troubadour.
Under his leadership the Steeldeck companies grew to include rental depots in London and Manchester, operations in Los Angeles (SteelDeck Inc.) and New York (Steeldeck NY Inc) and in recent years Hall Stage, a theatre supplier dating back to 1898.
In December 2024 the ABTT made him a Fellow, its highest honor. He accepted it, in his words, “really on behalf of all the inventors and designers and crafts people and managers” who had built the company with him. In 2025 he handed over as CEO to his daughter, Katherine Herzog Parsons, calling it “a father’s dream”.
Rest in peace Phil, we’ll miss you greatly.