With theatres striving to create breath-taking spectacles and leave the audience gasping for more, there is often world-class engineering behind the scenes. A British company is developing technology to ensure safety when excited performers and heavy machinery share the same space.
If live theatre is to compete with film and television, it has to produce visual spectacles to complement the performance of the actors, singers and musicians on stage. Hollywood’s increasing reliance on CGI (computer generated imagery) has upped the ante for stage set designers, who have to work before a live audience, in restricted space and with a constant eye on the safety of the many people working frantically round the set.
Many
stage props and almost all of the backdrops are lowered onto the stage
from the fly tower just behind it. Usually this is done quickly between
scenes, but sometimes it is during – and as part of – the actual
performance. Either way, safety and reliability are essential.
“Until recently, the sets were manually controlled with a technical stage manager watching everything from the wings and giving instructions by radio to the winch operators above.” explains Tony Ingham of Sensor Technology who is helping to introduce safety systems and automation to the theatre industry.
“Speed is of the essence during scene changes, but you have to be confident the winches won’t fail – which could easily damage the set or injure a person.”
Sensor Technology is achieving this using real-time load signals from each winch. The data is monitored by a computer in the control room so that instant action can be taken if any loads move out of tolerance.
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