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Irwin Seating manufactured these dramatic-looking seats for the Smith Center for the Performing Arts in Las Vegas—and later added custom cup-holders.

Your patrons spend a lot of time in your seats, they deserve the very best—and giving them the best has never been easier

When an audience member walks into a traditional proscenium theatre the two things they’ll notice most immediately are the front curtain and the seats. Of the two, they’ll be spending the most time with the seats.

The Second Stage space at the Allen Theatre uses Wenger’s Upper Deck system for seating. It’s shown here in the configuration for the Cleveland Play House production of Ten Chimneys.

Temporarily transforming your space into a striking theatre-in-the-round

Theatre-in-the-round has always offered directors the chance to stretch their staging imaginations in diverse new directions. Add to that the fresh challenge a circular set-up presents to an actor’s technical performance skill set, and the demands performing in the round makes from designers (calling for creative solutions), and you’ve got a wonderful opportunity to bring your audience something truly different.

Heather Headley as Rachel Marron and the chorus of The Bodyguard.

The hit musical The Bodyguard, now running at London’s Adelphi Theatre, turns the popular 1992 Whitney Houston/Kevin Costner film into a stage musical starring Heather Headley as the superstar singer Rachel Marron and Lloyd Owen as Frank Farmer, the former Secret Service agent turned bodyguard. The fact that the movie featured music including the hit song “I Will Always Love You,” was a bonus for the producers, but the move from film to stage of any story brings its own challenges. For scenic designers, they often need to bring the film’s multiple locations to life on a single stage.

Wenger’s versatile flipFORMS flip into a variety of shapes as multi-function rehearsal furniture.

Gregg Nelson and Ron Probst of Wenger Corp. get close to the customer to get closer to perfection

Just because they make temporary staging and seating doesn’t mean the company is. Wenger Corporation has been around for close to 70 years, but is still innovating and developing new and unique products to make putting shows on easier everywhere. We sat down with Ron Probst, a national sales manager at Wenger, and Gregg Nelson,  senior market manager, to talk about how they help create custom spaces, and how their company’s longevity and diversity keeps pulling them forward.

Filters and LED fixtures are more a match than you think

A look at how LEDs and traditional color filters can work together

By now, LED luminaires are fairly established as the newest addition to the lighting designers’ toolbox. Manufacturers have been making steady improvements to LED-based fixtures; they’re going beyond the original RGB LEDs and adding Amber and/or White LEDs to expand color mixing. Some have gone even further—Prism Projection has five LED colors and ETC Selador has seven colors. Many lights being produced now mix the colors into a homogenous whole, getting rid of the pixelization that was common in early LED lights where the beam had a tendency to look more like a rainbow of Skittles than a useful beam that mixed well with other sources.

Left to right: Claire Dana, Jim Schumcher and Cassandra Phillips glue tulle to the mylar stencil cut-outs.

The scene shop at Indiana Repertory Theatre had to solve a problem of trees for a production of The Gospel According to James

One of the most exciting parts of being a scenic artist is the adventure of thinking critically, so you can make things creatively. When a project comes my way that presents some potential problems, my heart revs. I see it as an adventure, not a setback.

In 2012 I was working as the assistant Charge Scenic Artist under charge scenic artist Claire Dana for the Indiana Repertory Theatre. A show was fast approaching by the name of The Gospel According to James, by Charles Smith. The play is a historical fiction about the last lynchings to take place in Indiana and explores the nature of memory in regard to our collective history.

The Que Audio DA12 single-ear boom mount headworn mic with a compact (2.5mm) vocal capsule

To prepare for this review, I visited Que Audio’s website and found out some interesting facts about the company and its products. First, Que Audio is owned by the Syncrotech Group, which is an Australian-owned group of professional audio companies that has been operating down under for more 30 years.

Dr. Davidson’s Eye on Theatre Health and Safety

Newly released books on a variety of theatre topics

From “how-to” to “how it happened,” this month’s books cover a wide range of interests.

Dr. Davidson’s Eye on Theatre Health and Safety is a three-volume set, focusing primarily on issues facing drama instruction and production in public schools—although most of the information applies equally to college and university theatre, community theatre and church performing arts groups. The first volume focuses on the responsibilities of administrators responsible for the overview of the entire program. The second volume targets onstage personnel who handle props, settings, curtains and other production tasks. Volume three covers the areas involved with setting the stage—building and painting sets, hanging lights, the shops and storage required for those activities and the environmental concerns that may arise. While there are checklists and guidelines, this is not exactly a how-to manual. Instead, author Dr. Randall Davidson points out common risks and hazards (including some that aren’t often thought of), as well as ways to reduce these risks. In addition to onstage and backstage risks, he discusses such issues as walkways into the theatre building, public areas like the lobby and restrooms, hazardous wastes and their disposal and proper storage of equipment for its future use. [$149 from Risk International Publishing, www.theatresafetybook.com]

Bill Sapsis

Is schedule 80 pipe better than schedule 40 for pipe battens?

Ask Uncle Bill is a quarterly, recurring column in Stage Directions that wants to answer all your rigging questions. Think of it as a print edition of the “Stump the Rigger” session at USITT. Got a question you want Bill to answer? Email him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

A reader asks…

I’ve been told that schedule 80 pipe is better than schedule 40 for pipe battens. What does schedule 40 & schedule 80 mean? And is schedule 80 really better?