Engineering and Theatre --Technical Conditions

Theatre artists/engineers have always tried to find ways to enhance the theatrical experience. Gerald Else placed aside Pickard-Cambridge's theory that theatre developed from earlier forms of public presentation and wrote about the creative leap. Throughout human history, the world has been blessed by people taking creative leaps, and the theatre world is no exception. Technological advances in the theatre world are a marvelous result of people who are firmly grounded in the knowledge of the discipline and taking creative leaps to make the experience better, more enjoyable, and more meaningful.

Manipulation of Audience Space

Defining performance space also defines audience space. Throughout history, theatre artists/engineers have manipulated the audience space: where they are located and how they view the performance. We can imagine primitive people gathered around a fire, seated, and experiencing a hunter's reenactment of his fear of the chase. Both audience and performance spaces are well-defined. We can also imagine that the ancient Greeks soon discovered that shouting in the agora and trying to tell a story at the same time was a problem when audience members could move around, talk, and focus elsewhere, although Solon's characterization was enough of a novelty to merit attention. They moved from the agora to a hillside to allow the audience to sit on the ground and be able to hear and see. Attention was gained, and focus was on the performance.

One usually overlooked technological advance of the audience space is the individual seat. The individual seat gave the patron claim to personal space which in turn offered the patron a vested place as part of the theatrical experience. The seat also forced the patron to face a particular direction - usually the direction of the performance space. And, finally, the individual seat bound the patron. Being physically bound to a space discouraged moving about. One of the first individual seats were set in stone and were specifically constructed for the VIPs. Most people sat on benches. Once the theatre became enclosed and money came to be a significant indicator of status as an audience member, individual seats were set aside for people who could afford them, usually in theatre boxes. And, finally, once the common man was deemed worthy, individual seats became the norm.

Other types of audience space manipulation are tiered rows, benches, boxes, balconies, pits, and adjustable seating arrangements. Not only do theatre companies build individual seating units that can be moved, as in the McArdle Theatre at Michigan Technological University, but some theatres have lifting machinery that literally changes the floor in the house. The Narashimin Hall in Japan changes its form using spiral lifts.

Manipulation of the Stage Floor

The first advance to manipulate the stage floor may have been the raised stage itself. Perhaps the raised stage separated actor from chorus in the ancient Greek theatre. With the advent of the perspective scene, the stage often was raked in order to maintain the illusion of perspective. (Raked means that the stage sloped upward from the edge near the audience to the back stage wall - hence the origin of upstage and downstage.) To accommodate special effects, we see traps in the stage floor as in the Elizabethan theatre.

With a change from wood as the primary theatre construction material to iron and then steel came significant changes in the manipulation of the stage floor. The Leacrofts explain that sometime during the 1870s, the Asphaleia syndicate

designed a system in which the stage floor was divided into a series of 'bridges', each subdivided into three parts, resting on hydraulically operated plungers. These could be raised or lowered, singly or in combination, and they could also be rotated at an angle or set at a slope to the stage floor.(1)

The Asphaleia stage was installed in the Budapest Opera House between 1875 and 1884.

Much of the machinery built to manipulate the stage floor during the late nineteenth century functioned to move scenery. Adolfe Appia, however, designed sets that connected audience to performance in such a way that pointed out the artistic use of levels to directors when staging drama. While acting levels as a manipulation of the stage floor are usually formed by the set designer, some modern theatres have stage floors that can create levels. The Hale Center Theater in West Valley City, Utah, has a round stage floor divided by independent lifts.

A common practice of manipulating the stage floor of the proscenium type of theatre architecture is by raising and lowering the apron. Lowered, the apron becomes the orchestra pit. In the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts at Michigan Technological University, extra seating units can be installed when the apron is lowered to the house floor level.

Machinery to Place and Move Scenery

Several books have been written about theatre machinery to shift scenery, and I can only offer a short inadequate outline here. Essentially, machinery helped solve problems.

Because theatre is about humankind's relationship with the world and also because the actor must exist in space, the "where" factor has always been important. (Please see the essay on Space.) Theatrical storytelling very often includes either general or specific location, and, depending on audience expectations, theatre artists/engineers confronted the problem of continuing the illusion inherent in theatrical storytelling. What this means is that in order to gain a theatrical experience for the audience member, theatre artists/engineers wanted a way to portray "where" without disturbing that experience very much. The answer to that problem was to invent machinery.

Theatre artists/engineers wanted to use machinery instead of people to place and move scenery as often as possible because the theatre is an art form about our relationship with the world and therefore the focus is on the actor. Another person entering the stage to move scenery shifts the focus off of the person-as-character onto the person-as-stage-hand and consequently disturbs the experience. Modern theatre productions having no choice but to use people to move scenery usually use blackouts, nearly always between scenes, which is a dedicated break in the story written in by the playwright. With scene shifting, the audience knows that it is not part of the story. But make the scene shift too long, and the audience's hold on the story will wane.

The earliest machinery was not connected to a theatre architectural structure. In a document estimated to date from 2000 B.C.E., we have an outline description of how the ceremony and drama of the Abydos Passion Play was executed in ancient Egypt. The "where" of this event was Osiris' sacred boat (built on a wagon) and the existing surrounds. Actors performed and battled on the boat (so realistically that many actor-warriors died of their wounds according to later Greek historians), and it moved from one place to another. The earliest machinery to move scenery was, indeed, one of the greatest inventions of all time: the wheel.

With dedicated space and theatre architecture, theatre artists/engineers brought the "where" to the theatre space. We do not know whether or not ancient Greek theatre artists/engineers made the mechane or the ekkeklema magical. (Magical is a theatrical convention meaning to make the engineering product appear without showing the mechanism that makes it work. Please see essay on theatrical conventions.) What we do know is that this machinery was a part of the theatre production and used for more than one drama.

The machinery used to place and move scenery can and did become an aspect of the theatrical experience outside the story. Machinery became a draw for theatergoers, for watching the shift happen was exciting. (A rather fun website about scene shifting machinery in the 16th, 17th, an 18th centuries can be found here.) To accommodate shifting scenery, theatres were constructed to support the machinery needed for shifting. The Leacrofts describe how the stage floor was used in the Theatre Royal at Leicester that was built in 1836.

In addition to the square corner traps for individual actors and a rectangular, centrally-placed 'grave trap', the stage was divided into a series of openings reflecting the wing positions. Sections of stage could slide apart, leaving 'cuts' in the floor to the full width of the proscenium. Narrow 'sloat cuts' permitted the raising of horizontal 'ground-rows' matching the side wings. Between these, wider openings made it possible to raise groups of actors, or units of built scenery, to stage level.(2)

The chariot-and-pole technique as well as grooves and shutters were early ways to shift scenery once the proscenium type of theatre architecture came to the fore. Much experimentation concerning how to manipulate wings took a great deal of effort once the wing and drop technique surfaced. Shutters were replaced by cloths on rollers that could be raised and lowered, and then the roof raised to permit flying during the 1880s. Flying machinery and development above the stage evolved tremendously during the late nineteenth century and continues today.

Repertory companies presenting a different production each evening needed a way to change scenery rapidly and efficiently. In 1896, two hydraulic lifts were installed in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and two electrically operated bridges were installed two years later.(3) Realistic box-set scenery complicated the need, and more complex machinery was used to shift. Steele MacKaye developed the elevator stage in 1879 in the Madison Square Theatre in New York where two entire stages could hold different complete sets to be raised and lowered as needed. In 1896, Karl Lautenschlaeger built a revolving stage.

Here a large part of the stage and the first and second mezzanines were designed as a great turntable with a diameter of some 78 feet (23.77m), to provide for the many and rapid changes of scene needed in Wagnerian operas. Two, three, or more scenes were to be set on the single stage, and moved into position behind the proscenium opening, the scenes, when finished with, being removed and replaced by further settings.(4)

In 1964, Walt Disney built the Carousel of Progress as a World's Fair attraction. This animatronic show features an opposing use of a revolving stage, where the circular stage is stationary and the audience travels around it. The carousel theater rotates around the central stage while the audience watches an animatronic family and the changes their home goes through over the decades. Currently, this is at Disney World in Tomorrowland.

Brandt of the Berlin Court Theatre is credited with creating the "Reform Stage." The stage floor was replaced with three movable platform wagons, each capable of holding a complete set. One could be rolled to the wing or backstage while another rolled onstage.

Today's state of the art theatres continue to develop from their past heritage in scene shifting machinery. Some modern state of the art theatres have a built-in stage elevator lifted by screw-jacks, rack and pinion drives, or scissor lifts. Some have stage wagon systems like the multi-level, multi-access system in the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, Spain. And to drive these systems are computers. Clive Odom summed up reasons justifying building machinery in modern theatres - in this case the Royal Opera House.

Build a Modern Opera House capable of presenting a varied daily repertoire of opera and ballet.
Allow more time for stage and lighting rehearsals.
Reduce the time necessary for scenery set ups on stage.
Improve health and safety(5)

This could have been written in the eighteenth century.

Manipulation of the Physical Theatre Building

Designed by George Izenhour, the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts at Michigan Technological University is a good example of the manipulation of the physical theatre building. He designed the building to be placed in two different "modes:" the theatre mode and the concert mode.

In the theatre mode, the right and left side of the proscenium arch is the wings that fold out during the concert mode. This makes the proscenium opening width shorter in theatre mode than when the proscenium arch wings are in concert mode. Also, the back wall of the stage lifts up to provide a ceiling while in concert mode. Below is a picture of the Rozsa stage showing the back wall concert ceiling down and against the wall. The edge of the proscenium that folds back is also seen on the far left. This view is taken from the stage left wing area.

The ceiling lifts and the proscenium folds out as well as do fold-out areas behind the ceiling to create the concert mode.

This is the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts in the concert mode. The fold-out sides were built with doors.

The choir and orchestra in performance. (The ceiling is unseen in this picture.) Additional shells help direct the choir voice.

Other evidence of the manipulation of the physical theatre building also prevails in the modern proscenium type of theatre architectural structure: the cyclorama.

Used for beauty, an indicator of location, and for special effects, the cyclorama was usually a "wraparound" cyc until recently. The wraparound cyc continued the illusion to a maximum of sightline possibilities. But the wraparound hinders scenic changes and actor exits, so the flat cyc is now common in proscenium theatres, as shown in the picture above. Yet another indication of the manipulation of the physical theatre building is the safety curtain.

Manipulation of Lighting

The open-air theatres of the ancient eras, medieval pageants, and the summer theatres of the Elizabethan age relied on the sun for visibility, of course. Once enclosed, lighting became a challenge to be solved. And, as usual, the answers to that problem resulted in helping to create an experience for the patron through the manipulation of lighting. Sometimes the outdoor theatre performance was at night, and then lighting needed a solution. One dark night in the chapter of Roman theatre history was the time Emperor Nero dipped Christians in tar and then lit them to serve as torches to light an evening chariot race.

Manipulating lighting was and continues to be a major technique to create the theatrical experience. In his 1638 Manual for Constructing Theatrical Scenes and Machines, Sabbattini writes of lowering hollow pipes to dim candle lights during performance. Brockett writes that during the Italian Renaissance

Leone di Somi argued that tragedy benefits from a lower level of illumination than that needed for comedy, and both he and Ingegneri stated that the stage will appear brighter if it can be contrasted with a darkened auditorium.(6)

Gas energy helped theatre artists/engineers enter a new phase of experimentation with illumination. Leacroft states that the "advent of gas meant that whole sections of lighting could be controlled by the turn of a tap, and varying degrees of brilliance could readily be achieved."(7) Whether with candles, chandeliers, oil, gas, or electricity, theatre artists/engineers have tuned in to the seemingly universal human emotional connection with light.

Manipulation of Acoustics

Perhaps the earliest attempt at manipulating acoustics was the ancient Greek mask. Since that time, the desire for the audience to hear clearly has stimulated the development of sound equipment in theatres as well as the concern for acoustical quality when building or revamping theaters. The quality of the equipment often depends on the availability of money.

Machinery to Place and Move Actors

Machinery helps make the experience magical for the audience. The ancient Greeks used the mechane, a simple crane, to carry an actor down from above as well as the ekkeklema, a wagon entering from the skene, to show a tableau of the dead. Medieval theatre artists/engineers used several types of machines to manipulate the actors and for special effects. Some of these seem like horror machines! One example is a machine that seems to flay the character and then decapitate him. A far less violent machine is for flying the actor performing in Peter Pan. But perhaps one of the most intriguing machines to move actors was the treadmill, specifically made for the production of Ben Hur. Legend has it that there were two sets of horses pulling chariots on the treadmill during the chariot race, one black and one white. The treadmill was rigged so that only the white horses won the race. One night, the black horses became so frustrated by always losing that they outran the treadmill and won the race. 'Twas an awkward moment in the story, but I'm sure the horses didn't care.

Machinery to Conceal and Reveal

Machinery to conceal and reveal help make the experience magical for the patron. One of the earliest machines we can find to conceal and reveal is seen in Roman theatre. Around 100 B.C., the main curtain, or aulaeum, was lowered into a slot or a trench near the front of the stage. The medieval theatre artists/engineers sometimes used machinery to produce smoke to conceal actors playing demons emerging from Hellmouth. Today's custom in the proscenium type of theatre is often to lift the main curtain to mark the beginning of the performance and to reveal the stage. Sometimes a drop or scrim is used to reveal and conceal that usually requires a flyloft and counterweight system as part of the architectural theater structure. Black curtains in the wings function to conceal the backstage area.

Richard and Helen Leacroft, Theatre and Playhouse: An illustrated survey of Theatre Building from Ancient Greece to the Present Day (London and New York: Methuen, 1984) 117.
Leacroft, 107.
Leacroft, 118.
Leacroft, 120.
Clive Odom, "Second Speaker [on stage wagon systems]," in Theatre Engineering and Architecture: Volume 1 - Engineering and Technology, Richard Brett, editor (London: Theatrical Events Ltd., 2004) ET 2-4.
Oscar G. Brockett, History of the Theatre, 8th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1999) 143.
Leacroft, 189.

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