Why You Should Consider Automated Rigging for Your School’s Stage
By: Ted Paget
Distinguished performing arts programs are not exclusive to either privately or publicly funded schools. Christian school students are increasingly enjoying state-of-the-art performance experiences. School leaders are becoming knowledgeable in securing the right equipment to support a variety of performing arts forms and styles.
Often the worship tradition of the church that sponsors a school will dictate the level of technical complexity in its school's arts programming. Church communities offering praise and worship supported by sophisticated lighting, sound, video, and scenery are often more likely to value training their technically oriented students both in church and in their schools.
It needs to be stated at the outset that when loads are suspended over the heads of stage crews and performers, there is always the possibility that accidents involving damage to equipment and/or injury to personnel can occur. However, these concerns can be mitigated.
Excellent source materials that describe safer stage rigging methods are available and are mentioned in this article. Two of the most important works are: Stage Rigging Handbook by Jay O. Glerum and Backstage Handbook, an Illustrated Almanac of Technical Information by Paul Carter.
Here are three options for masking/scenic support on stages/platforms that involve overhead suspension.
1. Dead Hung Rigging
For stages that will be used infrequently and for which scenic support requirements are minimal, dead hung (battens or track permanently supported from a grid or overhead structure) stage rigging for the masking and scenery pipe battens is often an acceptable option. This is especially true when few scenic elements are suspended and they are small enough to be attached from the top of a ladder or personnel lift.
The problem occurs when crew members either use the access equipment unsafely and without proper supervision or when the materials being attached to the pipe battens are either suspended improperly or are made of inappropriate materials. A helpful guide to the proper construction of scenery and its attachment to the pipe battens can be found in Scenery for the Theatre by Harold Burris-Meyer and Edward C. Cole.
However, even on dead hung stages, some rigging equipment needs to be lowered occasionally. For example, the lighting battens have fixtures that need to be safely re-lamped, serviced, etc. Simple automated hoists with push-button controls and digital elevation readouts offer a cost-effective means to safely lower and raise those few stage lighting pipe battens.
Stages that support a greater variety of performance events both from within the school and potentially involving outside groups necessitate more elaborate equipment. Scenery, masking, lighting, sound and/or video equipment must be safely and quickly loaded and unloaded from all the pipe battens on the stage, requiring the battens to be raised and lowered both prior to and during performances. Currently there are two options for moving stage rigging pipe battens: manual counterweight rigging or motorized/automated rigging.
2. Manual Counterweight Rigging
The traditional means of raising and lowering the battens is known as manual counterweight rigging. This system requires the user to lower a pipe to a point close enough to the stage floor to allow other stage crew members to remove and/or attach masking drapery, scenery, lighting fixtures, etc., while often acting as counterbalance until the counterweight arbors have been weighted. Simultaneously, other crew members must unload/load stage weights to match the weight being applied to the batten. Using steel or sometimes lead weights, these crew members work on a loading gallery located near the roof of the stage adjacent to the manual rigging counterweight arbors. If it sounds like a complicated and physically demanding set of activities, it is.
Manipulating manual counterweight rigging is only safely accomplished when the crew leader is an experienced stage technician who is able to accurately calculate loads being applied at any point in time to any pipe batten and communicate that information both to the crew on the floor and to the crew members loading and unloading the counterweight on the arbors. The stage crew must also understand and conscientiously execute their roles in the changeover and operation of the rigging system.
Finally, the stage structure itself is fundamental to secure rigging activity. To properly support counterweight rigging, high capacity head-beams and a loading gallery are necessary. With loads applied asymmetrically at the top of the stage house, the stage's volume must include enough height (or conversely an arbor pit below stage level) to account for the length of the counterweight arbors if full-height scenic elements are to clear the sightline at the top of the stage. All these factors and others drive the initial structural cost of the stage envelope itself.
3. Motorized/Automated Rigging
The more modern means of raising and lowering the battens is motorized rigging. When accompanied by computerized controls that allow for accurate positioning, speed control, load sensing and the recording/playback of rigging moves (cues), the system is called motorized/automated rigging.
The user must still lower a pipe to a point close enough to the stage floor to allow other stage crew members to remove and/or attach masking drapery, scenery, lighting fixtures, etc., but the floor crew does not have to hold the batten secure since no re-weighting of an arbor occurs. If it sounds like a less complicated and physically demanding set of activities, it is.
A motorized/automated rigging system requires fewer labor hours to operate than manual counterweight rigging simply because crews do not have to load/unload stage weights from the arbors. This allows the owner to present more shows and other public events annually.
Motorized/automated rigging is only safely accomplished when the crew leader understands that the hoist will only raise loads equal to or less than the rated capacity of the motor and its gearbox. When the load exceeds the motor's capacity, the motor will not operate until the load is reduced. Calculating the actual weight of the load is much less of a safety concern simply because the hoist will dictate its own limits.
For a successful performance, the stage rigging crew (hoist operator and floor crew to load/unload battens and spot for moves) understands and seriously operates the rigging system.
The initial cost of motorized/automated rigging equipment is greater than the equipment cost for counterweight rigging. However, facilities that anticipate motorized/automated rigging technology in their structural design cost nearly the same overall as stages designed for and equipped with counterweight rigging.
Unlike counterweight rigging, motorized/automated rigging does not require high-capacity head-beams and a loading gallery. Automated rigging allows the architect to reduce the stage's volume by lowering the roof, eliminating the arbor pit, and often deleting that portion of the stage wing reserved for the counterweight arbor travel and operating position. The structural engineer can then reduce column/girder sizes and even consider smaller footings to support the stage house.
Another advantage of motorized/automated stage rigging involves students learning the stage rigging techniques they will likely encounter in the churches they serve and/or the performance venues they work in during the coming years.
Christian schools seek to be the best and provide the best. Investing in motorized/automated rigging equipment for your school's stage supports spectacular, sustainable, and affordable scenery movement to inspire the next generation of artists.
Ted Paget is sales manager of Vortek, which is a division of Daktronics and a world leader in the design and manufacturing of automated rigging systems for theatrical, architectural, and arena applications, www.vortekrigging.com.
