Theatre Design & Technology - May 1968 - 13

Operation of this console is similar to playing a piano. It
takes skill and practice to develop its full potential. As an
example, I was talking yesterday to John Rothschild, one of
the excellent stage hand operators of the console. He had
just developed a new method of changing scenery by grouping the batten speed function onto one master lever, and
has used it very effectively for an opera. This now makes
the system more useful. It is a function in which he pushes
one lever and eight pipes go up at varying speeds. As a
result he can control the speed depending on the tempo of
the show.
This operator's refinement came after we installed the system, and it is a type of scenery movement we did not
anticipate. No one really could envision in its original design
all the things which would be done ultimately with the system in daily use.
Of the 109 battens, six run up and down stage: three pipe
battens on either side of the on-off battens to allow locating
scenery in front of the cyclorama which is behind these side
battens.
There is no wasted space in the fly area of this theatre. We
have our pipe battens on 5-V." centers. Each of the thirty
power supplies has control levers for the up and down direction of the batten, starting and stopping, and the speed at
which the batten travels. There are two digital-type height

Closeup of Control Console (Photo Jay Keene)

presets, one generally used for the working ("in") position
of the batten and the other for the storage position. The desired heights above the stage floor are dialed into the presets. The batten can be moved between these two positions,
stopping within plus or minus 1 / 1 6" every time, regardless
of the speed at which it is moving.
When we were testing the system in Madison, we used a
long vertical board and ran the battens down next to it and
put a pencil line on the board. Then we added weights and
took off weights; we ran it at different speeds; and still we
were able to come close to the original pencil mark every
time. The speed can be preset on a dial if required, and
the lever then only acts to start the batten moving automatically.
It took about four months for us to work out the electronic
and mechanical designs. At the time we were engineering
this system, SeR's were just beginning to be used for
hoisting applications. No one had ever developed a hoisting
system which would compensate for regenerative-type loads
(when the pipe starts down, it is quite heavy and the motor
has a tendency to run faster than the control for it).
We had a very slow minimum speed on these pipes: one
foot per minute. When a worm gear goes very slow it starts
"stair stepping." As the pipe comes down, it jerks. This
developed during tests. It took six specially designed gear
boxes to solve this problem. The final solution was a special
variety of gear tooth not available as a standard gear design.
The manufacturer of the gear box, DeLaval, had to machine
the teeth of the gear to our specifications to finally solve
the problem.
I felt sorry for Fred Buerki. We were always bringing motors
and gear boxes into his main theatre, and working Saturdays
and Sunday nights between his shows. We never dropped a
winch; we did drop a batten or two, but we repaired the
floor. It was part of a learning process.
There are several things possible with this system that
would be impossible or very difficult with a standard counterweight system. For example, imagine trying to rehearse
the movement of a moon to take 23 minutes for the set
piece to move from one end of the stage to the other. One
day the stagehand feels great, and he does it in fifteen
minutes; or on another, the moon goes halfway up and
stops-and then it starts up again after someone gives the
flyman a nudge. With this system, you push the button and
23 minutes later the unit arrives where it is supposed to be,
and stops automatically.
There is another feature we picked up on this system, one
we had not originally designed into it. Stage hands bring in
a drop, and tie it to a pipe batten. To determine where the
unit will work, the operator turns the height preset dial, and
the pipe will follow the dial up or down. When the piece
gets there, or the director says: "That is where I want it,"
you are through. It is only necessary to press a little lock
and a bypass button. The scenery then goes into storage
and will always come back into this position.
RUDY KU TNER: Operas are tremendously big shows, and
it seems that when designers come on this stage they want
to fill every nook and corner. To compound our problem, we
rehearse practically every day. In fact, I had quite a discussion with the management to get what we call a maintenance day. This equipment must be maintained, and it is
nOt that easy to get time on the stage between the set-ups
for three operas per day.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - May 1968