THE EQUIPMENT OF THE STAGE[4]
[4] Throughout this chapter I am at a disadvantage in that I do not thoroughly believe in the standards which I here set up. It is true that I am recommending higher standards than usually prevail in the sort of building which is here considered, or higher even than those that prevail in the well-equipped professional theatre. It is true, also, that these recommendations as viewed in the light of the known and tried methods of play production, are in the nature of reform and improvement. As such, I believe in them. As viewed in the light of the theatre of the future, I do not so thoroughly believe in them. But only a revolution in theatre methods can refresh our conceptions of what sort of place this theatre of the future is to be. This matter we shall leave for discussion in a final chapter. I should be ill-advised in advising ambitious groups interested in building adequate little playhouses to set aside finally the known and tried methods of play production and the stage they involve for methods adapted to a type of drama that may not yet exist, for methods that must be evolved only by sensitive and versed artists of the theatre. It is true that many signal new ideas come into any art through workers who do not know or trouble about tradition, young hands who blunder upon valuable methods through attacking their medium experimentally. For instance, Antoine, a gas-fitter by trade, who began his theatrical career as an amateur, by his daring innovations in the Théâtre Libre, renewed the life-force of the French theatre. But, in the main, I believe that the most important revolutionary changes in the stage are wrought by men who are thoroughly versed in the old practice, as was Gordon Craig. Hence, if the little theatres and community playhouses continue for the coming generation with a theatre modelled after the best practice of this our day, they may in good season contribute mightily to that theatre of the future to which I referred. Hence, for the present it is best that I continue in the rôle of reporter, rather than that of prophet.
The outstanding point about the stage, apart from the life the actors bring to it, is that it is a machine. It is a mechanical device used to aid in the setting forth of a play, much as a potter’s wheel aids the maker of vases, or a mortise and tenon machine helps the cabinet-maker. Perhaps the cabinet-maker is no less a hand-craftsman because he uses the mechanical device to shorten his labor, and it is probable that the vase has a truer form for being turned on a wheel. But cabinets have been made wholly by hand and vases turned without the potter’s wheel. There are people who treasure works made wholly by hand above the machine-aided work, however artistic. The theatre once did without the adventitious aids it now employs. Once it was merely a platform set in the sunlight, revealed to the sight of an assembled audience. Many believe that the theatre of the future will be something of that sort, welcoming, however, in addition to or instead of the sun, the more constantly available, controllable and subtly colorable electric light.
But the Greeks had their machines for the revelation of gods, and there is something about periaktoi, or revolving pieces of scenery. It is with the machines that the theatre has concerned itself most of all. Every developed stage has employed an amount of mechanism for the producing of those “effects” which I mentioned in the preceding chapter; and it may be that the theatre always will,—one wing of the theatre, the Right, doubtless.
Of late years, with the advent of the naturalistic or realistic type of drama, the stage has sought more and more illusion, not only in its imitations of the movements and acts of men and women but in its representation of their surroundings. It has tried to become a more perfect machine,—more nearly an instrument of precision. It may be significant to observe that, although masterpieces of drama gave impetus to the development of the illusion stage,—outstandingly the plays of Ibsen,—the illusion stage has brought forth no masterpieces. In this country, it may be held responsible for the buzz-saw, train-wreck, or horse-race type of melodrama, a type now happily removed from the theatre by the moving picture with its still higher degree of visual veracity. In Germany, the stage as machine has been developed to an extraordinary degree, and, for the most part, never debauched by exhibitions of effects for their own sake, as in our sensational melodrama of half a generation ago. I shall discuss a number of these German inventions in a later chapter, but for the present propose to consider the stage as a machine adapted to average demands.
There are two primary demands—that the machine shall be able to do the work demanded of it efficiently and with a minimum danger of breakdown, and that the machine be subject to control. The work of the stage-machine is, of course, the handling of scenery, the illusion-stuff of the present-day stage. This scenery is of two types: pieces that are suspended from ropes (hanging pieces), and pieces that stand on the floor (set pieces). For exterior scenes, the first type includes drops, “borders” representing foliage, leg-drops representing trees, pillars, arches, etc., or sections of wall, house-front, or other flat architectural units, large enough to warrant hanging overhead when out of use, so as to save floor space; and—for interior scenes—ceilings and back walls. The second type includes, for exterior scenes, any low-standing units, such as walls, hedges, fences, tree trunks, “wings” or set-houses; and for interior scenes, the side-walls of the room and very often part or the whole of the back wall.
For the manipulation of hanging scenery, the most important piece of stage machinery is the grid-iron. This is a slatted platform of steel or iron joists, built a few feet below the roof of the stage, just enough below to allow head-room for a man standing on it. Along the center of the grid-iron, on a line at a right angle to the foot-lights, is set a row of blocks and sheaves of a special type, manufactured for stage use. Equidistant right and left of this center row by half the width of the stage proper (the part of the stage within the proscenium) are other rows. Over these sheaves, ropes are passed. Thus, hanging over the stage parallel to the back wall, in sets of three, are lines to which scenery may be attached. The other ends of the lines in each set are brought together at one side or the other of the stage, so that the three ropes of each set may be operated as one. On the side to which the lines are led is located the pin-rail, either on a fly-gallery or at the floor level. Of each set of three, the line hanging nearest the side from which the lines are operated—the pin-rail side—is known as the short line, the line most remote from it is known as the long line, and the other as the center line. On very large stages, with an opening of forty feet or more, four lines to each set are advisable, not only to bear the greater weight of the larger pieces of scenery required, but also to secure a better trim, or level hang of the scenery.
These lines, needless to say, should be of the best hemp rope, of a weight adjusted to the size of the stage. Half-inch line is the lightest it is wise to use. This rope should be subjected to periodical inspection, to forestall breaking and the falling of scenery, with consequent damage to the scenery, the play, or the actors.
On some grid-irons, the blocks are screwed to the under side of the grid. This is unsafe, as they have been known to tear loose. They should ride the joists, the lines dropping between each two. At least twenty-five sets of lines should be provided.
When a set of lines is not weighted with scenery, sandbags are tied to the loose ends, so that they may be lowered to the floor when needed. Frequently a piece of scenery will be found too heavy for one or two men to raise from the floor. In such cases, counterweights in the form of large sand-bags are hung on the part of the lines between the grid-iron and the pin-rail.