This flying method is a very simple example. If you were to take it further, you could imagine how to fly a person. It works the same way, but uses much heavier equipment. The flying of people and of heavy objects is best left to the professionals who have the proper training and equipment.

For our production of Dracula, we needed a bat to fly around the stage. Not just up and down, but left to right as well. You'll see that the bat is able to go up and down via tie line through a pulley. This takes care of the up & down part

Hello Again and welcome to the Techie’s Corner. This month I am going to start a series of articles on platforms. We will try to cover everything from parallels to triskets to space age stressskin and everything in between.

Platforms in some form or another have been used in theatre as long as theatre and the stage has existed. In fact the stage itself is a form of platform. In some cases a stage is a permanent installation inside a building and is usually raised to some degree above the audience. By far though, the majority of stages in the world today are temporary structures made up of platforms. Rock concerts, Music festivals, fair grounds, school cafetoriums, etc. comprise more stages than all of the legitimate theatres in the world.

To see a larger, more detailed and less blurry version of the board, click on it...
And this is how it looked on stage from behind.

This is what it looked like in action. The scene involved these two actors having a discussion while hanging up laundry. So, the clothesline had to appear and disappear with ease. When you pull on a lever, the lever would pull on a cable that pulls the arm up and into place.