On building a theatre / Stage construction and equipment for small theatres, schools and community

by Irving Pichel

The primary purpose of hanging scenery in this fashion is to be able to haul it out of sight in the upper part of the stage when it is not in use. Hence large overhead space is necessary. This system also makes possible the use of unstiffened scenic units, such as drop curtains and borders, which, literally, have no legs to stand on.

In large stages the lines are controlled from a pin-rail on a gallery, built out from one of the side walls of the stage. In smaller stages the pin-rail may be built against one of the side walls on the floor level. This has various advantages—ease of access the foremost, and the saving of a stage-hand, who would otherwise have to remain on the fly-gallery, besides. The advantages to be claimed for the fly-gallery are that its use leaves the stage floor clear of ropes, leaves the side wall clear for the stacking of scenery, and is a valuable vantage point from which to cast light upon the stage.

The stage of the Century Theatre is equipped with a counterweight system that practically eliminates hand-power in the raising and lowering of hanging scenery. To each set of lines is attached a metal case, or container, which rides up the stage wall between tracks. At the top of the stage, above each container, there is a magazine filled with buckshot. By an ingenious mechanism, when a piece of scenery hanging in the loft is to be lowered to the floor level, a quantity of the shot in the container is allowed to flow out, so that the scenery outweighs the counterweight and descends. Its descent can be stopped at any point by brakes on the lines. When it is to be raised, shot from the magazine above is allowed to flow into the container until the counterweight outweighs the scenery, and the scenery ascends. The shot that flows to the bottom of the chute is conveyed by an endless chain-and-bucket conveyer to the magazines at the top. Such a system is only warranted on stages of opera-house proportions. There are also systems for controlling the lines by motors; but on the stage of average size, man-power is the safest and most dependable.

Scenery that stands on the floor requires little by way of machinery. Some of it is self-supporting, as are the “wings,”—folding, screen-like pieces used to mask the sides of the stage. All set scenery is “framed,” so that it stands rigid enough when braced from the back. Part of the equipment of every stage is a supply of stage-braces for the support of such scenery. These are made of hardwood, can be extended to any desired length, have a prong at the top which hooks into a screw-eye fastened to the scenery, and a foot-iron at the bottom which can he fastened to the stage floor by means of a stage screw or “peg.” The use of these pegs demands a soft-wood stage floor into which they will bite easily. Good stage braces can be obtained from any reliable dealer in stage equipment.

The main curtain of the theatre, if it raises and lowers, is often operated from the fly-gallery. It is better, however, to have it operated from the stage level, on the same side of the stage as the fly-gallery or the pin-rail. The draw type of curtain is always handled from the stage floor. “Travelers” for these curtains can be more cheaply bought than made, and are kept in stock by any stage-rigging firm.

It is well to have the stage flooring built in lateral sections resting on joists that run the width of the stage. When traps are needed in the floor, they can then be cut without difficulty at any point.

The lighting equipment of the stage, by far the most important of its mechanical attributes, I shall describe later, but I shall treat here of one device, which is structural. It is one of the German inventions for the perfection of illusion to which I have referred, and the only one I recommend to little theatres, far and wide. I recommend it because of the added beauty it can bring into the playhouse, rather than because of its merit as a part of the perfect machine. This is the Kuppel-horizont, or sky-dome.

The sky-dome approximates in shape a quarter-sphere, much like the shells commonly placed behind out-door band stands. The base line begins far enough toward the front of the stage and behind the proscenium to be masked from the opposite side of the auditorium, and sweeps around the back of the stage. The back and sides of the dome rise vertically for some distance and then arch at the top toward the front of the stage. The higher the dome is, the less the canopy need overhang the front of the stage; and the less it overhangs, the more grid-iron space is available for hanging scenery. But it will be seen at once that the more dome there is to take the place of the usual hanging stuff, the fewer of the usual tawdry borders are needed.

The late Wallace Sabine, in a series of experiments conducted with a model built at Harvard University by Theodore C. Browne and the present writer, concluded that the quarter-sphere was disadvantageous to the acoustics of the stage and was not required in order to obtain the best results in lighting. He recommended a form flatter at the back and with a sharper curvature at the sides and top.

Three modifications of this device have been installed in little theatres in America—one at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, one at the Beechwood Theatre in Scarborough, and one at the Arts and Crafts Theatre in Detroit. The Neighborhood Playhouse “dome” is really little more than a cyclorama built in plaster. It has no canopy overhead, and the ends extend toward the front of the stage only a little distance. The one at the Beechwood Theatre is similarly simplified. But even this plaster cyclorama is a great improvement over the canvas cyclorama in its stability, freedom from wrinkles, and better diffusion of light.