SCENERY AS STAGECRAFT

Hard Scenery & Soft Scenery

HARD SCENERY: Has a rigid frame (i.e. wood, plastic, metal)

FLATS

Broadway/Standard Flats
- Thin, traditionally covered in fabric
- Reveal: Shows audience illusion of depth

Soft-Covered Flats: Most flats that are scenery normally covered in muslin
Hard-Covered Flats: Covered in Lauan (¼ thick plywood)

Hollywood/TV Flats
- Thick, always covered in hard material
- Originally used in TV
- No corner-blocks or keystones

PLATFORMS

- Must be sturdy enough for actors to walk on

- ¾ inch plywood

Stock Platforms: theatres have 4ft x 8ft platforms they reuse

Stressed-skin Platforms: platform that is much thinner, ½ inch platform on top and bottom
Parallel: folding frames // cannot change height
 SCENERY AS STAGECRAFT
Hard Scenery & Soft Scenery

SOFT SCENERY: No rigid frame

DRAPE

- Drapes are curtains, they should appear to the audience like curtains. The audience
should always know its curtains
- Jute webbing and grommets at the tops of drape to reinforce
- Open hem on the bottom to weigh down drape (like Cinderella skirt with curtain weights)
- Pipe if flat drape
- Chain for drapes with fullness

Masking is usually done in black velour (borders and legs) / frequently done flat

Flat Drape: piece of finished fabric laid out flat. a 20ft wide piece of fabric is 20ft wide finished
Full Drape: adds depth and texture. A 50ft wide piece of fabric is 25ft wide finished
- 100% fullness means you double the amount of fabric
- (i.e. a 100% full drape that is 20ft finished will be 40ft)

A traveler is fabric that moves on tracks, should always overlap each other

Tab Curtain: 2 panels overlapping with rings sewn in, pulling a string on ring opens the curtain
- Doesn’t work built flat // opens diagonal and up
Contour Curtain: one big panel dead hung at the top, vertical lines and rings
- must have fullness // opens up w/ a semi-circle
- strings pull fastest in center, slower on outsides
Austrian Curtain: fullness is horizontal, vertical lines and rings pull all lines up at once
 SCENERY AS STAGECRAFT
Hard Scenery & Soft Scenery

SOFT SCENERY: No rigid frame

DROPS

- Drops are soft pieces of scenery that never want you to think they are curtains. They
always want to convince you they are something else (i.e. sky, wall)
- Almost always built flat, frequently in muslin
- Seams must run horizontally

Drop/Backdrop: One big solid piece of fabric

Cut Drop: big piece of muslin with a cut-out in the middle around the profile of painted scenery
- (like trees)
Cut Drop with netting: has netting on the back face to keep cut out shapes up
Cut Border: cut drop but just a border

If its vertical and hangs from the side of the stage and keeps the audience from seeing into the
wings, its a leg.
 MACHINERY IN SCENERY
Rigging

FLY SYSTEMS

HEMP SYSTEM
- Rope is attached to a load, if a single line is used
it’s called a spot line
- Multiple lines can be used to support a wooden rail
or pipe called a batten
- The loft block or spot block is a pulley that sits on
the grid and changes the direction of the rope
offstage
- The head block changes the rope direction down
towards the fly gallery where the operator is,
- A head block can have multiple
sheaves to accommodate lines to hang
battens

- Natural fiber ropes will stretch/shrink

depending on the weather, causing complications

SINGLE-PURCHASE SYSTEM
- The lift lines attached to the batten are replaced with steel
wire rope
- The steel cables are secured to the top of a counterweight
arbor which replaces the sandbags
- The arbor holds a stack of metal weights called bricks or
pigs used to balance the load
- a typical full brick weighs ~20 lbs
- The arbor’s travel is guided by T-bar guide rails
- The operating line or hand line is tied to the top and
bottom of the arbor, passes over the head block and under
the tension block

- Can be operated much easier than the hemp system

- Materials do not react to the weather like in the
hemp system
 MACHINERY IN SCENERY
Rigging

FLY SYSTEMS

DOUBLE-PURCHASE SYSTEM
- Pulleys at the top and bottom of the arbor (which
you wouldn’t see in a single-purchase)

- This system adds pulleys to the top and bottom of the

arbor
- Operating line passes through these pulleys and is
fixed to the ground and just below the head block

- Creates a mechanical advantage of 2 to 1 where the

batten travels twice the distance that the arbor does,
however arbor must carry twice the weight of the load

ROLL DROP OR “OLEO” DROP

- Flying a drop with no flyspace
- Drop is dead hung to a batten
- Bottom of the drop is extra long
and attached to a long tube
- A couple pieces of line go
through pulleys and wrap around
the tube
- Pulling the lines roll the tube,
which rolls the drop

ALWAYS RIG THINGS FROM

THE BOTTOM
 MACHINERY IN SCENERY
Automation

Jack: triangular frame that attached to the back of a frame to add stability
If you want your flat to move, you must put wheels on the bottom of the jack
- A caster jack

Caster: wheel thingy you attach to a frame to make it

movable
- 2 main types of caster
- Swivel/Smart Caster: ball bearings allow the
attachment to the wheel to spin 360 degrees
- Fixed/Dumb Caster: Wheel is fixed, only moves
forward and backward

When you put casters on a platform, it becomes a wagon

Skid/Pallet: low profile wagon, usually only 1 ½ tall with beveled edges
- Pallet: rollers on the bottom, allows for weight of set
pieces/people
- Skid: little felt thingies that go on the bottom of
furniture legs, doesn’t allow for a lot of weight

Pivoted Wagons & Jackknife

- Platforms on casters anchored at a corner point
- Full Jackknife: the whole set revolves off to one side,
requires a lot of space to pivot
- Half Jackknife: set is split in half, each half pivots out

Tracked Wagons
- Move R to L or Up to Down
- rolling/moving wagons with scenery
- Show Deck: building a secondary stage floor on top of
the actual stage floor with very thin grooves. Knives
go into those grooves to keep tracked wagons and
stuff
- Winch: drum with a handle that pulls cables
Revolve/Turntable
- Circular platform that revolves from the middle
- Donut Revolve: outer circle revolves, inner circle is separate

Lifts
- Any scenic element that rises or lowers from the stage that is built
as part of the set
- (like those cheesy things actors stand on to rise up)

Elevator
- Also a lift technically, larger and built into a theatre
- (like the pit @ Valor)