CHAPTER IV.
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 theThéâtre 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.
[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 theThéâtre 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.
Theoutstanding 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 tothe 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 aboutperiaktoi, 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 aninstrument 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 ofuse, 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 asupply 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 requiredin 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.