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.
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.
At the Arts and Crafts Theatre, the ends of the dome do not curve
toward the front of the stage at all, but the top arches, forming a
canopy over the back part of the stage. The only true dome in this
country was installed by Samuel J. Hume at the Madison Theatre in
Detroit, now used as a moving-picture playhouse.
With such a dome, a great deal of the litter of painted scenery can
be done away with. A background of light takes the place of the usual
painted back-drop, and much of the scenery usually set at the sides
or hung overhead, merely to keep the eye from penetrating to the
back-regions of the stage, is no longer needed.
Added to the stage at the time of construction, the dome costs little
more than the price of its materials. The initial cost will be saved
many times over in the decreased cost of scenery. The very least that
should be done, if the budget does not allow for the construction
of an entire dome, is to plaster the back wall of the stage. This,
more than counterweights, traps, revolving stages, and all the other
paraphernalia of advanced construction, will extend the possibilities
of the stage machine, not only for the uses of illusion but for the
service of the imagination.
A familiar feature of most theatres in which productions are made is
the paint-bridge and paint-frame at the back of the stage. Here the
scenery to be painted, mounted on the frame, is raised and lowered
before the bridge. To my mind, this is a waste of space and money.
Primarily it is a waste of space at the back of the stage. If the dome
is used it is quite out of the question. But, strongest argument of
all, it is not needed. If the scenery must be painted in the theatre,
it can be painted lying flat on the floor. The saving on this item may
well be enough to cover the cost of the sky-dome.
[Illustration: Auditorium of the Arts and Crafts Theatre, Detroit.
This theatre is of particular interest in connection with the movement
to build community houses as war memorials. It shows how a playhouse
may be fitted informally and beautifully into a building not designed
primarily for dramatic purposes.]
[Illustration: Auditorium of the theatre at the Carnegie Institute
of Technology, Pittsburgh. This is an admirable example of dignified
decoration, uniform floor slope, and generously spaced seats; but the
auditorium is too wide to secure adequate sight-lines from all seats.
See plan on page 28.]