# Tech Challenges from Shows



## MightyRedDevil (Mar 8, 2013)

Hi all,
I just started as a high school theater teacher and I have a tech class of about 35 kids (way too many for one class IMO). The kids can take the class multiple years, but it's essentially the same class (just building sets for productions). One thing that I've found is that the kids will get really excited about having to solve challenges. I've been searching the archives for ideas, but what I'd like to do is have a daily challenge for them. For example, we just finished a production of _Almost, Maine_ by John Cariani, which has some odd tech things, like showing the northern lights, or a shoe dropping from the sky. I turned them loose and it was awesome to see what they came up with. Or when we talked about _Dial M for Murder_ and how would they go about stabbing the actor with the scissors so they stuck in his back?

So, my question is this: What have been some of your favorite tech obstacles to overcome, and how did you accomplish them? I am interested to hear your solutions to the problems so that I have an example or two to give to them after I hear their answers. These challenges can come from any area (props, costumes, lights, sound, even logistical issues of set storage and such). These students are not the most technically advanced FYI. Any help would be great. If you remember the name of the show, that would be great too.

Thanks!


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## seanandkate (Mar 8, 2013)

This thread was interesting enough for me to remember it existed. I would imagine searching for "How do I..." as a search term would bring up some interesting results for you to ponder.


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## 1deejay (Apr 22, 2013)

"The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940"
The set doesn't change scenes so that makes that easy. It is a library essentialy in someones mansion house or so. (I wasn't read into the plot much, I did most of the lights but was involved in the construction.) Book cases everywhere, the challenge. One has to open on a hinge, one revolves, and one slides. Secret passageways are a large part of the plot in the show. I did watch the show but it has been a while. I just remember the challenge of construction.
The hinge was easy. We just mounted it on a door and hid the handle with a book. The revolving door was a little more tricky. What we di for the whole set was we put it on raised platforms. Just simple pallettes to make, a few two by fours and something to cover. We cut a circle in the platform and put the book case on castors, then put a pin in the top to keep it in place to rotate. (Not sure if that made sense but I'll see if I can find pictures.) The sliding one was hard to conceal. I wasn't involved with that challenge much but I saw the result. Basically, the book case was on castors. Then we made a track going back, then it went to the side. So it slide back then over.
Hopefully that made sense. I'll get to those pictures. I don't have them but I know who does.


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## MightyRedDevil (Apr 22, 2013)

That's exactly the kind of explanation I was looking for! Thank you so much. Pictures would be great, but I definitely don't want you to go too much out of your way to find them. This one was especially helpful because that's a show that I'm looking at doing in the next few years.


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## TheaterEd (Apr 22, 2013)

When working on our most recent show I had a parent volunteer build two 4' wide stair cases that were going to be joined with a platform to make a rolling set piece. Unfortunately he made the steps 4' wide and then added 1/2" ply to each side for stability. This meant that the stairs were going to be two inches too wide to fit through the work shop door. Our choices were to assemble it and try to put it on it's side and slide it out of the door, or to build it in pieces and assemble it in the space. We went with the latter option. Ended up being two stair cases, a 4' tall 4' x 8' platform, and a custom made base that had to be put together when we loaded in. It all went smoothly, but we would have been up a creek if a passing student wouldn't have said "is that going to fit through the door?"


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## bobcatarts (Apr 22, 2013)

Fiddler on the Roof - the haunting scene - How to make a bed rock (like a car with hydraulics) AND spin, but be rigid and stable before/after the moment? With little budget and no power/control cables?

Solution: 
On top a central support column, a ball and socket (maybe CV transmission? it's been a while) joint with a turntable attached to that. The bed platform on the very top. At each corner, flip down legs to provide stability before/after. The "power" was from 2 or 3 burly students hiding out under.

We also had the most petite performer sitting on another burly performer's shoulders, draped in gauze and screeching the ghost part. Just before the end of the song, she was clipped in to a cable and quickly flown off stage- her carrying performer ducking and hiding under the same bed in a light change. It all worked really well, and was probably safe, maybe.


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## leastlikely (Apr 22, 2013)

I worked on a production of Hamlet (actual title of the show: _Hamlecchino: Clown Prince of Denmark_ - it was a Commedia dell'Arte adaptation) where Ophelia's death was staged in rain on aerial silks. The rain was the easy part! Run a hose through a PVC pipe with holes in it, and the rain falls into a trough that was just above the raked stage. The water was probably about 6 feet upstage of the silks, and there was no safety concern for the aerialist but it made for a cool effect, seeing her rolling down with water falling behind her. The tricky technical thing was that the silks couldn't ever be seen before or after this moment, and Ophelia couldn't be seen climbing them - she was revealed at the top, then slowly fell down through Gertrude's speech.

Our set was three tracks with four moving walls, so each scene had a different configuration of walls. We worked it out so right before her death, the walls were lined up blocking USC. Behind the walls, I would fly in a single leg directly above the walls (to mask the bright blue silks and, more importantly, the climb up). The silks were deadhung from aircraft cable on the grid - the bottom loop of the cable was on a pulley system that went up through the grid and I controlled it on the fly rail, so once the leg was in place I'd untie the silks and let them fall. The aerialist would then climb to the top (above the borders) and get all wrapped up, then I'd fly the leg out, then the set moved to reveal the silks, then she'd be revealed as she fell from the sky. And as soon as she had rolled all the way to the bottom and landed in Laertes' arms, I'd pull the rope on the bottom loop of the cable, pulling the silks back up to the grid. I don't have any photos of the rigging, but here's a pretty production still which tells you absolutely nothing about the tech behind it 




(The other thumbnail shows the moving walls)


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## kiwitechgirl (Apr 23, 2013)

I worked on a New Zealand play (called _The Gods of Warm Beer_) which calls for a character to be shot and "her brains splatter on the wall behind her", according to the stage directions. We ended up building a "blood cannon" - long piece of tube with a compressed air fitting welded to the end. The hose leading to the air tank (which we charged up with a compressor) had a solenoid on it, so that when the trigger button was pressed, there was a burst of compressed air into the tube, firing the blood out of it. For the blood, we soaked a cotton wool ball in water and pushed that down to the end of the tube, then poured stage blood in on top of it - the cotton wool ball stopped the blood leaking into the air hose too much, and by the time it was fired, it was bloodsoaked and kind of looked like brain matter because it disintegrated a bit when it hit the wall. It worked like a charm - the cleanup was pretty hideous but the effect was great.

Another blood trick I did was on a show where a character was crucified on stage (not _Jesus Christ Superstar_!), and the director asked for blood to pour out of his hands. The cross was rigged with a small hose on each "arm", coming through from the back to the front, which had black rubber stoppers in them - with the cross being quite ornately carved you couldn't see them at all. Each hose was fed by a small funnel mounted high up on the back of the cross - we tried upside down bottles but of course it didn't work because air couldn't get into the bottle to replace the blood. As the other character "nailed" the guy to the cross - which we achieved with pre-drilled holes between his fingers into which she hammered a 6-inch nail - she pulled the stopper out and the blood flowed. I did have to make sure there was no air in the tube so there was no delay between her pulling the stopper out and the blood flowing out.


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## mightymel (Jul 17, 2013)

Did you ever find pictures of the bookcases? We are planning on doing that show in Oct and I've just been searching the web for ideas.


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## TheatreTeachre (Jul 18, 2013)

William McNulty's adaptation of Dracula is rife with these sorts of problems to the point that I nearly regretted doing it. I unleashed the problems of the set into my tech class the spring before, and my repeaters had a blast tearing into the special effects opportunities.

One of the biggest challenges was that we had to create the illusion of an actress levitating above her bed. We built the whole stage on 4' platforms, replaced the center of a chaise lounge with a 2x10, placed four steel rods beneath the chaise so that they could be raised on a small board via pulley. Essentially a tech under the stage did a seated row, which pushed the rods up through the stage floor into the 2x10 in the chaise. Coupled with a conveniently placed sheet and lots of top light and loud music, it worked pretty well. In retrospect, I needed to do something to cut down on friction noise between the rods and the wood of the raised stage floor.


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## MPowers (Jul 18, 2013)

My experience with a Dracula play didn't have the levitation gag but it did have three others that ranged from very simple to a little difficult. The first was how to have a sofa very visibly "compress" as though an invisible Dracula had seated himself. The scond was the hardest, in part due to the set design, was for a pair of frenchdoors, centered in a large window wall, to swing open then shut again as the invisible dracula passed through. The third was the most spactacular, the 20" tall crucifix being held by one actor that burst into flames when dracula touched it. 

The first was simply several small (Clipard Minimatic brand) pneumatic cylinders that were attached to webbing which was sewn to the back side of the upholstry lining before the cover was put on. Activated by small solonoid valves that were sequenced to start at the front and finish with the upper back as "he" sat and a second set that pulled from one side to the other about half way through as though he had crossed his legs or shifted his weight.

The second was slightly more difficult as the doors had to be operated normally by the live actors during the show and they were placed in a large window wall with a row of window panes above the door as well, so there was no place but under the floor to hide any mechnism. The particular stage we were on was not trapped, which would have made it very easy, so the concession was a 8" high landing across the room about 6' in front of the wall, with the veranda outside the same height. The doors had a 3/16"x1 1/2" steel bar about 1' long running along the underside of the door. It stuck out the hinge end and had a 1/2" steel rod (cold rolled, keyed shaft, not just hot rolled rod) welded to it that went down through the floor directly in line with the hinge pin axis. The end of the shaft was threaded and keyed so it could be bolted to another flat bar, about 30" long, under the floor. To open and close the doors all you had to do was operate the bars below the floor like a long lever . It could have been by strings/cable/rope running under the deck to a stage hand or pneumatic cylinders, small servo or stepper motors etc. We used a 2 hp VFD motor with a programable frequency drive simply because we had it in stock from previous shows. It was about 98% more power than we needed, but the programable drive made the action very realistic. The doors were pulled open and shut by a #25 roller chain with an encoder on the chain. The connection to the motor was a small pneumatic clutch so the doors could be operated by the actors and the chain just free wheeled. The encoder was on the chain so it alway knew where the door was, even when the motor was disengaged. If for some reason the actors left the doors slightly ajar before the gimmick, the drive still "knew" where they were. The only draw back with the effect design was that both doors operated together, so as not to give away the gimmick, the actors always had to open both doors even though either one would move the other. With the programable drive and the long sweep of the operating arms, the doors motion ramped up and down at the start and stop instead of "jerk", even when operated very fast. 

The Last item, the cross was fairly easy but very spactacular. The basic wood cross was a solid maple 2x2, half lapped into a cross 20" tall x about 14" wide. Then we very carefully band-sawed a 1/4" slice off the back. Next we routed out the interior of the cross to make a hollow shell about 1/4" thick. We found a brass Christ figure of an appropriate size and, just in case anyone posed any objections, we had a priest perform an official "desanctifying rite" and provide us with a written confirmation that it had been done. Better to deal with possible issues like that ahead of time. Anyway, we brazed threaded rod to the back so it could be attached to the cross and removed every day. We used flash paper, Flash Paper glue and flash paper ink to make a 3 ply face to the cross that, of course had to be done new every day. The paper covered the entire face of the cross except the bottom 3" where the actor had to hold on. The paper was lightly glued to the face and then the brass figure was attached. there was a 1/4" hole under the figure that an electric match was passed through. The match head and 1/2" wad of flash paper were behind the torso of the figure. Inside the hollowed out shell there were six 9v batteries wired in series-parrallel to get 27v for the 24v electric match. There were two switches, one to arm the gag and one to fire it. The arm switch was a slide switch with a small LED to indicate it was armed. This was located on the side at the top. The "Fire" switch was a NO momentary at the bottom. The bottom 3" of the back cover was actually hinged with a stiff spring under it. The actor had to squeeze the cross firmly to fire it. Thus moments before the gag the actor was blocked to hold the cross at the top and bottom and "thrust" it toward the vampire, hand at top sliding the "arm" switch to on and verifying it by seeing the LED light up. Then as Dracula reached out and touched the cross, the actor let go of the top and squeezed the bottom with both hands. The cross burst into flame that lasted about 3 seconds, enough to convince the audience that the vampire wasn't going to try that again!

Both the first two gags could be done by stage hands pulling trick line, the cross could be done by substituting super bright LEDs and perhaps a flash cube. With todays available LEDs and small chips available online and from novelty shops, a short flash sequence with the LEDs might substitute for flame in places where pyro is not allowed. This was done long before LEDs and similar were available, it was at GeVa Theatre, a LORT C house back in 1983. We already owned the equipment and expertise so the mechanics were easy. We already had stage hands for fire watch and at that time our own internal safety protocol with pyro was far more than "required", though today it would be considered a standard but minimum compliance.


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