Tale #12: Falling Far and Falling Fast

DISCLAIMER: Please do not use anything in this vignette as actual technical theater instruction. I am a choreographer/director first and foremost, and should never be in charge of teaching technical theater.

There are so many different areas one could be involved in regarding theater. You could be on the creative team through directing, choreographing, music directing, costume designing, etc. You could be on the technical team through lighting design, sound design, set design, etc. You could be on the administrative team through producing, selling tickets, marketing, publicity, etc.

Or I guess you could be an actor or a performer, but really like they aren’t as important as the rest of us.

Just kidding! Actors are very valuable. Without actors, it’s true, there’d be no show. However, I believe that it’s actors plus all of those other very important roles listed above that make a show one worth seeing.

Over my years with VACT, I tried to learn about as many of the different roles as I could. I felt it was important to be well-rounded in my theater knowledge so I could effectively lead shows and demonstrate adequate appreciation for all of the volunteers who donated their time and skills to a production.

The first field outside of my own I started to learn was technical theater. First lesson: how to hang lights and drops from the pipes.

When you walk into the former Verona Area High School Performing Arts Center (now the middle school performing arts center) stage doors you will cut through the shop and take a right. You will see a large patch of blue flooring in front of you. To the right of that blue floor is the ropes. There are about 45 different ropes that bring in all of the pipes above the stage. To the left you will see the stage and the black wings that keep the backstage area shielded from the audience.

If you walk forward you will see a small desk next to the door to the house (audience seats). That is the Stage Manager’s desk. It is also the place you go if you want to eat licorice during a show.

To the right of the stage manager’s desk is a large spiral staircase. If you go up the stairs to the first level, you will walk into a small storage space that takes you to the ladder that leads you to the catwalk. The catwalk lives high above the audience and is where the spotlight operators work during the shows.

If you continue climbing the spiral staircase past that first level, you will get a phenomenal workout and reach the weight deck.

The weight deck is very, very high off the ground. It is not for those with acrophobia.

On the weight deck, you do what is called re-weighting.

So, imagine you are doing a production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. For your production, you have purchased a beautiful backdrop to represent the castle interior. That backdrop probably weighs about 100 pounds.

Your backdrop arrives in a big cardboard box. You bring the box on the stage, place it center under the pipe you want to hang it on, and then open it. Next, you bring in your pipe that you are going to hang the drop on. You fly the pipe all the way in so that it is reachable.

If you have been reading my posts in order, you should remember the cardinal rule: do not duck under the pipes! In order to keep all of your teeth in your mouth, follow the tech rules!

Once the pipe has been lowered, you unfold the backdrop from out of the box and into the arms of 10 or 15 cast members who hold it as if they were carrying a stack of logs. As a unit, they will walk the drop right under the pipe. Next, everyone will tie the drop onto the pipe with all of the tie straps on the edge of the drop. One knot, one bow.

Once the backdrop has been tied on, the ropes person will fly it out partway so the bottom of the drop is now at shoulder height. The same 10 or 15 actors, or maybe some different ones if the originals got bored, hold the bottom steady while someone starts feeding pipes into the bottom slit of the drop. This is what keeps the backdrop taut and straight throughout the production. You need that so the image is clear and not wrinkly.

So, you’ve got your pipe in. That takes us up to about 150 pounds.

The rope system is like a pulley. In order for the ropes person to be able to pull the drop in smoothly during a show, there needs to be even weight on both sides. We have put 150 pounds on the pipe, therefore we need to counterweight the other side of the rope to be 150 pounds.

This process is done on the weight deck. Because the pipe with the drop has been flown all the way in, the stack of weights that serves as that counterweight has flown all the way up. Therefore, you need to be on the weight deck to add the additional weight.

Do you remember the strip of blue floor I mentioned? Before you start hoisting any 10 or 20 pound weights over the safety bar and onto the stack that is hovering 40 feet in the air, you need to make sure that there is absolutely no one below you that could get hit if you, god forbid, drop one.

Therefore, before you begin any re-weighting, it is important that you yell down “Clear the Blue” and wait for someone to confirm that the blue is clear. It is also important that someone monitors the blue floor to make sure no one steps on it during this process.

To help explain this point to the little ones, I like to say “sharks in the water, no swimming!” That keeps them off the blue floor.

One crisp fall day, Steve (fake fiancé/lighting guy) taught me how to re-weight a pipe from the weight deck. So we climbed the many, many stairs to get to the top. When adding weight to the weight stack, you first need to take out a little screw from the thin metal plate on top of the stack that is holding the weights steady. By taking the screw out, you can lift the thin metal plate up and add the weights underneath.

Ok step one, take out screw. Simple enough.

I unscrewed it and then for some unknown reason, completely unbeknownst to me, the damn thing falls. It falls far and it falls fast. It falls all the way down, down, down to the blue floor.

Steve and I both looked over the safety bar.

He looked at me.

I looked straight ahead.

He said calmly, “did you just drop the screw?”

I nodded.

He said, “well then, you better go downstairs and get it.”

I trotted down the spiral staircase as quickly as I could to fetch the screw. I had to stop a few times along the way to stop the vertigo from setting in.

I got the screw and ran right back up.

Of course, I had to wait a little before actually handling weights as I was quite dizzy and quite winded. 

Photos from 2016’s Bring It On the Musical taken by the Capital Times.