Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2018 - Public - 44

that this sheave did not have a groove.
It had a flat edge. This was not used for
rope, not used for rigging, and was not
of interest for the purpose of my counterweight rigging research. But, it stuck in
the back of my mind.
Later, while at the 2016 USITT
conference in St. Louis, Wendy WaszutBarrett of Bella Scena in Minneapolis
showed a video to a couple of us over
breakfast one day. The 1989 video was
taken in the Steyer Opera House in Decorah, Iowa. The video came to WaszutBarrett via Paul Sannerud. Paul and

Whereas the Clancy catalogue offered "flat sheaves,"
the Sosman & Landis catalogue of 1889 offered
"sheaves for flats." Image courtesy of the Chicago
History Museum.

A screen shot of the 'half mortise flat sheave' with vertical orientation in the J.R. Clancy catalogue of 1885-6.
Available from the USITT website at http://jrclancyarchive.usitt.org/.

accommodate a fly tower, as we know it
today. Without fly towers, these theatres'
"lofts" would accommodate limited vertical movement, perhaps as little as 3' to
8', which is not enough to fly out a drop.
The wing and shutter system was a very
suitable technology for these buildings.

The Half Mortise Flat Sheave

This discussion is partly about historical
technology and partly about the unpredictability of research paths. Sometimes,
materials that puzzle historians for years
suddenly get clarified at completely unexpected times, as happened when a

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THEATRE DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY

SPRING 2018

curious item in a catalog happened to be
visible in a video.
While researching counterweight
rigging in the J.R. Clancy catalogues, I
noticed a peculiar device called a "half
mortise flat sheave." I did not understand
the use of this product, especially given
the vertical orientation of the device as
presented on the page of the catalogue.
I contemplated its possible use in counterweight rigging, but determined that it
was not relevant. For counterweight rigging, we use a grooved sheave. Despite
being represented by a drawing rather
than by a photograph, a reader could see

Peggy Sannerud were participants in
that video, which was written, directed,
and produced by George D. Glenn.
At the time, Glenn was professor
of theatre at the University of Northern
Iowa. The Steyer Opera House in Decorah was built in 1870. The Steyer Opera
House still stands today. The theatre has
been completely renovated and updated
and now serves as an event center as
part of the Winneshiek Hotel and Restaurant.
The Glenn video was interesting.
The people in the video were professors and students from the University of
Northern Iowa. They had rediscovered
this old opera house and received permission to restore aspects of it. The
end result of their restorations was a
working wing and shutter system with a
number of sets of flats. At the end of the
video, they were seen changing the sets
as would have been done in the 19th cen-

http://jrclancyarchive.usitt.org/

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