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Christian Illusionist Special user Ohio (currently located in Missouri) 503 Posts |
How how and how wide is an average theatre stage?
What I mean is, if I had backdrops made to travel with, is there a rough average of so many feet wide and so many feet high that theatre stages might conform too? I'm not talking about depth, just the width and height of a stage opening, or rather the width and height of what a person out in the audience sees.
We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.
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biff_g Loyal user Canada 240 Posts |
I don't know what the average would be, but I think that most theatres have their specs listed online. If not online, then you can most certainly call them and they would have a stage plot that they could reference, if not actually give to you.
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George Ledo Magic Café Columnist SF Bay Area 3042 Posts |
There's no such thing as an average width or height for stages. It all depends on what type of stages you're playing in: school auditoriums, community or college theaters, old Vaudeville or road houses, or opera houses, and even then there's a huge variation.
An old trick used by many touring acts is to have a backdrop that's designed such that you can fold back the ends or the bottom, and it still looks like a complete "picture." So, if the stage is smaller than the drop, you fold it until it fits. Or, if the stage is larger than the drop, you use house legs and borders to narrow down the back wall so the drop looks like it was custom made for that stage. BTW, legs are the narrow vertical "curtains" that go on the sides of the stage, and for some reason most of them seem to be black. Borders are the horizontal drapes that go across the top of the stage, usually to hide the light pipes, and, again, generally seem to be black. Sometimes borders are incorrectly referred to as "teasers." A teaser is actually a hard piece of scenery (sometimes built into the theater itself) that's used to lower the height of the stage opening visually. Likewise, a tormentor is a hard piece of scenery that's used to narrow down the stage opening from side to side.
That's our departed buddy Burt, aka The Great Burtini, doing his famous Cups and Mice routine
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Christian Illusionist Special user Ohio (currently located in Missouri) 503 Posts |
Thank you very much!
Great suggestion and information.
We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.
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ClintonMagus Inner circle Southwestern Southeast 3997 Posts |
The "opening" on the high school/junior high stages in my area are all 35-40 feet wide, and 14-15 feet high.
That and a few bucks will buy a cup of coffee at Seattle Drip...
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