# Theater Industry vs. Other Rigging



## backstagebadger (Jan 2, 2014)

Hey CB,

This question is purely theoretical, just me wondering. 
In theater, we are always very concerned about making sure everything is rigged 110% correctly with a safety.
For example, (assuming an ideal situation) stage lights are supported by rated hardware on a batten that is held by rated hardware from a ceiling able to support the load, all hung by a certified rigger. Yet, fixtures in the lobby outside the theater are held into the drop ceiling by thin metal brackets and boxes.

My question I guess is, why are we so much more concerned about this than other industries are?

(note: no contempt towards our industry or any other industry is intended, I'm just curious).

Thanks!


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## kicknargel (Jan 2, 2014)

I have had the same thoughts myself. I remember working in a theatre under construction and seeing a big cantilevered ceiling supported by twisted bailing wire. 

I think one factor you could point to as a difference is the way things are used. Those lobby lights will sit there undisturbed and very seldom be touched. The stage lights are on a moving system and subject to dynamic forces, which can increase the forces on them several times over. Further, they could always catch on something and try to rip themselves out of the air. 

Fly system rigging is similar to crane rigging, because that's really what it is. And we're a bit more lax than crane rigging, as there they never operate over anyone's head, and wear hardhats at all times.


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## SteveB (Jan 2, 2014)

Hard hats are a touchy subject. Many theatrical facilities are seeing hard hats mandated when anyone's working overhead. The San Francisco Opera was fined by OSHA many years back after 2 accidents and now has all crew in hard hats as the result of the OSHA report. When my wife worked on the recent Sound of Music, NBC required everyone to wear hard hats on the set. Enforcement was hit and miss as I saw in the photo's.

So don't be surprised if this becomes the norm.




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## cbrandt (Jan 2, 2014)

On my last tour I had one house that had their crew wear hard hats while the riggers were in the air. Interesting point on that, they didn't require it of the any of the road crew, didn't even bring it up. I would not be surprised to start seeing hard hats and steel toes being mandated for more houses that are safety conscious.


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## BillConnerFASTC (Jan 2, 2014)

In which other industries is the rigging - hoisting not dead hung - permitted and customary over people? That's why in my opinion. Anyplace else where there are loads moving overhead regulations generally don't allow people under the loads.

That brings up amusement park type rides, but they have their own standards that I'll wager are not too lenient.


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## DuckJordan (Jan 2, 2014)

cbrandt said:


> On my last tour I had one house that had their crew wear hard hats while the riggers were in the air. Interesting point on that, they didn't require it of the any of the road crew, didn't even bring it up. I would not be surprised to start seeing hard hats and steel toes being mandated for more houses that are safety conscious.


That house happen to be in Sioux falls, SD

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## Lextech (Jan 2, 2014)

We had a tour come thru and the road crew all had to wear hardhats while the riggers were up. None of the locals had to.


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## cbrandt (Jan 2, 2014)

DuckJordan said:


> That house happen to be in Sioux falls, SD
> 
> Sent from my XT1060 using Tapatalk



Nope, it was in Norfolk, VA.


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## soundman (Jan 2, 2014)

BillConnerASTC said:


> In which other industries is the rigging - hoisting not dead hung - permitted and customary over people? That's why in my opinion. Anyplace else where there are loads moving overhead regulations generally don't allow people under the loads.



If you ask CM we should be following those rules as well. 

"Tie off the load with auxiliary chains or cables before access to
the area beneath the load is permitted. As an alternative, the
system may be designed such that malfunction or failure of one
hoist’s load bearing components does not cause load loss and/or
overloading of any other hoists in the system. Note that in such a
system, hoist performance and function must be monitored visually
or with use of load cells"

From the 'Classic' Lodestar manual. 

In Canada and Europe there are more buildings that require road crew and locals to wear hard hats than in the United States. In AustraliaI had to wear a hi-vis vest. I have never gotten any grief about my shoes not being steel toes though. My two cents is it's not a bad idea and if I don't have to work under a stage I will wear one more often than not. If I am working under a low structure I find the extra two inches mean I run into things I would have avoided with out a hard hat.


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## porkchop (Jan 2, 2014)

Lextech said:


> We had a tour come thru and the road crew all had to wear hardhats while the riggers were up. None of the locals had to.




cbrandt said:


> On my last tour I had one house that had their crew wear hard hats while the riggers were in the air. Interesting point on that, they didn't require it of the any of the road crew.



Both of those are fairly common policies. The way it was explained to me, if the tour requires hard hats on locals then they have to provide a hard hat for each and every local. Beyond being a huge liability this isn't a ridiculous request, but no tour manager wants to keep track of a hamper filled with 100 hard hats (not to mention maintaining it because they would disappear over time). It's pretty much the reverse argument the other way. The tour is renting the venue, but the venue generally likes to hold the tour responsible to create and enforce their own standards of safety. It's all about passing off liability. The bottom line for me is that unless its a perfectly flat stage with nothing at all in the air then there's at least some small reason to keep a hardhat on. Be smart, think for yourself about the dangers present, and never judge someone for keeping their hard hat on. We ran into a theatre in Brazil that required any house staff that climbed to wear a hart hat. Rather than make fun of this practice, I wish the crew I worked with had listened to the reasoning behind the policy and thought to ourselves about if it would have made our lives safer (HINT: if you fall off the truss and hit your head, you will be better off with a helmet on).

As far as rigging outside of the theatre goes my experience is that it runs the gamut of safety just like rigging inside the theatre does. It's nice that the OP's experience is that all theatrical rigging is 110% correct and safe, but sadly I can assure you that is not the case across the board. Some theatrical rigging is great, some is shady. Some industrial rigging is almost overly safe, other industrial rigging is a light breeze from coming to pieces. There's increased public exposure to accidents in our industry, and that has helped us improve the emphasis on safety, but stagehands still put really shady things in the air.

Lastly just a link to JR Clancy's Scary Rigging Photo of the Week. Enjoy cringing.


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## SteveB (Jan 2, 2014)

OK, but here's a question/situation. 

I would understand the need for hard hats on the deck crew when there are riggers working overhead. Arena's come to mind in this instance, and/or fly system theaters where any work is occurring over the heads of those working on deck.

But we've always "cleared the rail" when loading bricks at the loading gallery, so there never anybody on that side of the stage when we load/unload weight. And I would question the need for hard hats to be worn by the deck crew in that situation, a hard hat being completely redundant with 27 lbs counterweights falling from 60 ft.

What's the thinking ?


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## DuckJordan (Jan 3, 2014)

SteveB said:


> OK, but here's a question/situation.
> 
> I would understand the need for hard hats on the deck crew when there are riggers working overhead. Arena's come to mind in this instance, and/or fly system theaters where any work is occurring over the heads of those working on deck.
> 
> ...



You should be wearing a hard hat any way because line sets are moving/being worked on...

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## MNicolai (Jan 3, 2014)

We had a tour through recently that required the road crew wear hard hats during the in and out, and if members of the road crew were more than 6' off of the ground, they had to have a fall protection harness on. These requirements were set forth by their insurance company. The road crew did not always comply with their own rules though because they thought it was silly at times just to get on a short ladder.

I'm not sure I agree with the premise of the question that theater is always safer than other industries -- more likely the OP's exposure to other industries is not all that much. I've seen theater to theater, vast differences in the quality of safety and rigging procedures, whereas active construction sites I've been on have tended to have pretty stringent safety procedures. Tends to vary by construction manager, but we've had sites where just to go in and hang a projection screen, we have to show up at 6:30am to watch a safety video in the job trailer, then they put a sticker on your hard hat to make it readily apparent if someone was on site who hadn't been through the safety training. We could be on one job site for that construction manager one week, then the next week be at another site of theirs, and they still require that you go through the safety training process and test again before entering the construction area.

One of our job sites right now is a 2700 seat theater renovation that previously was 4800 seats. They had two cranes inside the theater parked where the orchestra seating had been and used the cranes to dismantle the balcony structures. Now they've got several stories of scaffolding up in the audience area while they work on the proscenium and ceiling of the theater. As with many construction sites, if you want to get into that work site, at a minimum you're gonna need to have a hard hat, work boots, and high-visibility clothing. Getting into a lift or onto scaffolding, and in some cases working on ladder requires you put on a harness. You'll probably also have someone from the construction manager keeping an eye on you and checking in on you from time to time to verify your compliance with their safety standards.

Something we regularly see at our job sites that are still active construction sites is that the orchestra pits are completely cordoned off and if you want to go near the open pit area, you have to put on a fall protection harness and tether yourself to the installed anchor points bolted into the concrete floor.

I'm not saying theater is wildly dangerous in comparison to the construction industry, but the safety procedures I've seen in place in theaters are not often capable of holding a candle to the safety procedures commonly seen in the construction industry. Theaters are more likely to make it up as they go while construction sites tend to have rigid policies on what will and will not be acceptable practices. Some theaters only have a culture they've grown into but not even any actual policies on what's acceptable.


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## BillConnerFASTC (Jan 3, 2014)

Rigging system design vs. operation and people around and under rigging are somewhat separate issues. I tend to agree with the o.p. that the common design factors tossed about for stage rigging are high. Whether 8:1 or 10:1, they are high compared to some structural framing that drops below 2:1 in some structures. On the other hand, the training in place for someone running a piece of construction machinery is much more consistent and rigorous than stages.


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## TheaterEd (Jan 3, 2014)

My theory is, that because everything we ins

SteveB said:


> OK, but here's a question/situation.
> 
> I would understand the need for hard hats on the deck crew when there are riggers working overhead. Arena's come to mind in this instance, and/or fly system theaters where any work is occurring over the heads of those working on deck.
> 
> ...


The way I figure it, 

27 lbs counterweights falling from 60 ft = death

The person loading it having their cell phone fall out of their pocket on the other hand.....
The other scenario that comes to mind is that anytime someone is working overhead, they could accidentally bump something that was left behind by the last person up there. Hypothetical situation, a person accidentally leaves a bolt on the grid while working, the next person up walks on the grid causing it to vibrate and the bolt falls through.

When I took over the keys to a brand new auditorium almost four years back, I was astounded at the amount of loose materials that were left behind up in the grid. Worked their for two and a half years and in my last month there I was still finding washers and nuts in weird places.


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## kicknargel (Jan 5, 2014)

Wow, I sure created a hijack with my hardhat comment. My point was, under the rules of most other industries we would not be able to have actors on the stage while a set piece was flying in or out, at least not without a hardhat. And certainly not in the dark. That's the kind of special circumstance that causes us to use very high safety factors and very specific procedures. 

I'd always wear a hardhat while someone was working above me, whether it was required or not. At least I might get an open casket at the funeral.


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