Theatre Design & Technology - May 1968 - 16

when it wasn't supposed to. When they brought the lights
up, the drop was down on the stage. I asked where the
"feel" was then. We now actually have very good "feel,"
and the man can see what he is moving.
We decided to use thirty power supplies because it seemed
most logical: we have enough time to move thirty pipes:
29 up and one down. But there are compl ications of cost
that are involved in selecting the number of power supplies.
I think I was not originally concerned about swi tchboard
size, but now from experience I find that I am very glad it
is not larger.
MR. WEISS: You might mention that you have a fail-safe
system in the gridiron in case of power failure.
MR. KUNTNER: Of course I insisted on this. In case something goes wrong with the switchboard. In fact, the whole
house has two safety Iimit switches. In addition, each motor
has an external shaft from which, in case we lose complete
control of the system down here, or control at the board,
we can use a motor and run the pipe from up there if necessary. We can run it and stop it from there. A stop button
is located there, and a run button, separate from the control
here. The intent was that, in case we do have trouble, we
can run it from the gridiron. Fortunately, this provision hasn't
been needed yet.
The large cyc, which we are demonstrating, is actually controlled by a pipe system we had left over. We rigged it so
we could control it separately.
Suppose we run in the Bedroom Scene from Lohengrin. It
is hung from two pipes. You will note that they come in
simultaneously-unlike rope systems which always have a
little variation in them.
It is important, too, to notice the speed at which these
pipes travel with a 1,000 pound loading. We conducted
tests in the old opera house because there was initial doubt
that it could be done as fast electrically. Many people
claimed the hand is faster. I had to prove that it was not
necessarily faster. With a thousand pounds, four or five men
are needed, even with counterweight.
The main curtain is presently opened here in twelve seconds.
We presently have a contract with Peter Albrecht to try reducing the closing time to six seconds. Fortunately the
motor is large enough to do the job, and the modification
is possible. This is one of the problems encountered alter
the system was installed: we learn from experience.

FRED BUERKI: I think that, over the past five to ten years,
motorized rigging has been given a bad name. There have
been some installations of motorized equipment that have
been far from satisfactory. You have heard about the wonderful synchronization here, but some of the early motorized
equipment had no synchronization at all. The first few installations of SCR dimmers, if I remember correctly, didn't
always function quite as designers hoped they would.
For a full year engineers, electricians, everyone played
games until this equipment actually worked. When Paul said
a pipe went through the floor, he meant that it actually did.
He didn't mention, however, that on one occasion we ha'd a
big chandelier on stage and we had to do quite a bit of repair on the chandelier, too.

Admittedly, motorized equipment has had a bad name. Probably its poor reputation was more general in the universities
than in the commercial theatre, because it was in the universities where the early experimenting was done. We were
willing to go out on a limb.
QUESTION: Mister Birkle, can you give us some indication
as to the approximate cost of this system?
MR. BIRKLE: The price for the fly system is going down
considerably; the first components that went into the SCR
light dimmers cost over $100 each. You can buy them now
for under $10. As we sell these systems, the price is going
to go down too.
The fly system at the Met cost $ 730,000 installed. However, this included a lot of preliminary engineering-far-out.
space-age engineering. In the meantime, we put another
automatic fly system in a $3 million building in West Palm
Beach. That system cost $200,000. We just completed
another contract in Madison, which was a complete electrical system for $93,000. I would say that the costs vary
anywhere from twice the cost of a compound rigging manual
counterweight system, to four or five times the cost of such
a system.
I would say that much of the price depends on the customer's requirements. It depends on how fast you want the
batten to go, what the maximum load will be, how many
masters are necessary, and how many power supplies.
We made a study for a client in a professional theatre and
found that in five or six years the wages saved by using
fewer stage hands for set-up and takedown pay for the extra
cost of the system, to say noth ing of the additional use of
the facilities. I think Rudy would have a difficult time setting
up and taking down three operas in one day. He would need
twenty more people up in the fly lolt to handle the weight
they would have to throw around. It amounts to between
filty and 100 tons of counterweight per day. While someone is loading an arbor, there are eight men down below
waiting for something to happen.
JOEL RUBIN: Could we ask Mr. Kuntner how many fewer
stage hands he has now 7
MR. KUNTNER: In the old opera house, which is not quite
so large as this, we didn't have so many pipes. We had as
many as ten, twelve or filteen men on the fly system to
control it, because each man could only operate two or three
pipes, and then another man would have to move it up. We
usually have five to ten battens flying out.
The problem arises when the piece gets very heavy. One
would need as many as four people, and occasionally five
or six, which is really what made us think of motorizing the
pipes. I discovered in the old opera house that at one time
when we had very heavy pieces, there were two pipes tied
together. Don Carlo is a very good example. There are
tremendous pieces of scenery in that opera. It took five
people to control the two pipes. I don't have to tell you
when you have five people trying to get around two lines,
how complicated it is. Somebody there is not going to be
able to do anything. If itis only three or four people, they
don't have enough strength to pull it up, even with the
counterweights. This is one of the reasons that I have decided to go into this kind of system. There is no question
about savings.

THEATRE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

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