Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2010 - 60

courtesy of the library of congress

sockets for connecting electric bunch lights and
ground rows, and Hoover's Improved latch, a
device that could latch flats together quickly and
securely without laying them down on stage.
This was also the year in which Clancy developed a relationship with a technical director
who would become one of the leading stage rigging innovators of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. Claude Hagen served as the
technical director for The New Theatre and the
Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City, and his
experience in mounting complex productions
led him to invent hardware to solve all kinds of
challenges. He and John Clancy worked together to introduce many of the components of the
counterweight rigging system we still use today.
J. R. Clancy's 1903 catalog-the first issue to
require an index-offered 12-pound and 24-pound
counterweights and an arbor to hold them in place.
Over the next decade, the components that made
counterweight rigging safer would begin to appear
one by one, as the total system gradually came together in the minds of its inventors.

Innovation on fire

Depression can't keep theatre down

While we can guess that counterweight
rigging was already used in some form in the
latter half of the nineteenth century, the first evidence of this in J. R. Clancy's catalogs occurred
in 1890. In this catalog, John Clancy offered a
counterweight holder-not unlike the arbors in
use today-that could hold up to 150 pounds.
"Our hardware made seven years ago is
not the equal of that of to-day by a very long
reckoning," Clancy wrote in his 1891 catalog,
"nor is that of three years ago, or more than
one year ago, by diminishing differences, but
we make with confidence our claim that at
each stage of progress our products have been
in the van [1890s slang for 'in the lead']."
It's hard to imagine today that much innovation was required for hardware like pulleys and sheaves, but John Clancy and his
engineers worked constantly to create more
practical forms of these basic products. In
1892, the company introduced side pulleys
and screw sheaves, for use in rafters in halls
with no gridiron. loft's drop Holder became
a catalog staple, a holder to keep a partially
rolled drop in place.

theatre

design

technology

In 1893, a major depression swept through the
United States, causing the worst financial panic in the nation's history to that date. It began
with a scenario that's hard to imagine today: a
problem of under-consumption, in which the
economy was producing more product than
people were buying. Storms, drought and overproduction stalled agriculture and sent prices
tumbling, while investment in railroad building
slowed. businesses took an enormous hit, especially in manufacturing. Worker strikes were
violent and costly, and unemployment exceeded
ten percent for more than five years.
Yet the market for technical theatre products continued to grow, even in the face of hard
economic times. Clancy added products to his
catalog, including iron strapped curtain guides
and Wilding's patented easy trim clamp, for attaching sandbags on drops as counterweight.
"despite the so called 'hard times,' our
trade has increased fully thirty-five percent,"
John Clancy wrote in the 1893 catalog. Over
the next several years, he would expand his
company's offering to include stage plugs and

2010

On december 30, 1903, a single event would
change the way theatres operated forever. The
Iroquois Theatre on West Randolph Street in
Chicago, newly opened just a few weeks before,
had already been cited by Fireproof Magazine
for a number of potential fire hazards: the absence of a stage draft shaft, exposed wood in
the construction of the proscenium arch, and
a marked deficiency in the number of exits the
theatre provided. Worse, the theatre contained
large iron gates to prevent audience members
in the gallery (balcony) from moving down
to more expensive seats. Narrow fire escapes,
confusing pathways from the stage house to the
exits, fire exits hidden behind draperies, and
complicated locks on the outside of exit doors
made this theatre a disaster waiting to happen.
Happen it did: during a sold-out matinee
performance of Mr. Bluebeard on december
30, an arc light shorted out and ignited a muslin
curtain. The fire ran rampant into the fly gallery, touching off the highly flammable painted
canvases above and sending the fire through
the rafters. The asbestos fire curtain snagged
and could not be lowered. Opening the double
freight doors at the back of the stage turned the
blaze into a rolling fireball that roared through
the top portion of the house. Panicked patrons,
trapped in the gallery by the iron gates, were

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2010