Stamey Photo. Co.

FIG. 42.-AN EXTERIOR OF CONVENTIONALIZED TREES.

Rostand's "The Romancers," as produced by the Central High School, Kansas City, Missouri.
Director, Virginia Robertson.

Note the appropriateness of the conventionalized trees in a fantastic setting of this sort. The
cut-out wall, which would not be suitable for a realistic play, is altogether fitting in a setting which
is purely a design.

at the earliest moment possible. The painting should be a broken color blue, made of two or three shades of gray-blue. The paint can be spattered on, but should be smooth and even. If a plaster wall is impossible, a sky cyclorama of cloth must serve. Some way of stretching it tight should be invented, for nothing is more distressing to illusion than the sight of wrinkles in the sky. A large drop, properly painted, will often be sufficient, although this necessitates masking the ends of the "sky" on each side with flats of some sort.

When a sky "cyc," or a painted back drop, is used, it is often necessary to use a "ground roll," which is a low profile representing the horizon, masking the meeting place of the sky and the stage floor. It may represent distant hills or forests, and it also hides the floor lights that illuminate the "cyc." (See page 221.) The ground roll may be made in the usual way with canvas stretched on a frame, or it may be cut out of profile or beaver board. It need not be more than six inches or a foot high, and should stand a foot or so in front of the bottom of the drop. Profile board is a three-ply board made especially for "cut outs," such as trees, ground rolls, or other irregular edges. It may be secured from theatrical supply houses.

Exteriors should be kept as simple as possible. Lights must often be depended upon for most of the effects. The ornate profile trees and borders, which deceive no one, should be avoided. Color is the main thing. A successful setting for "The Tempest" was merely a huge cyclorama of flats enclosing the stage. They had been painted with six inch stripes of purple

and orange. Over these stripes, several different greens were roughly sponged: gray-green, browngreen, yellow-green, and small spots of bright green. The set, properly lighted, gave the general tone of a thick forest of varying greens, while the vertical stripes of purple and orange, hardly visible through the green, suggested the up and down shadows or tree trunks disappearing in the distance. Another method of making a good forest background is to puddle the surface with the several greens.

If actual trees are called for by the play, it is wise, whenever possible, to conventionalize them, as in the illustration for "The Romancers," facing page 164. The stage design then becomes a mere pattern, which the audience accepts. It sees that no attempt is being made to make real-looking trees, and is not bothered by the fact. The one thing to be always avoided is the mixing of reality and fancy. A painted background of a forest, with two or three real trees that have been dragged in from a forest, is always a failure. As artists say, the designer must stay in his medium.

"Flying" Scenery

HANDLING SCENERY

The problem of handling scenery back stage during the performance is simplified in a theater which has sufficient overhead space and proper equipment so that much of the scenery can be "flied." "To fly" a piece of scenery is to drag it up out of sight. For this reason, a theater should have at least as much room

above the top of the proscenium arch as below it. Some recent theaters have twice as much: if the proscenium arch opening is thirty feet high, there is a space above that of almost sixty. At the top of this space, about six feet from the roof of the stage, is the "gridiron," which in the modern theater is an elaborate grating or rack of steel. Men who are working on scenery may walk around on top of the grid, and blocks and pulleys may be fastened to any part of the underside.

Method of "Flying"

Three single pulleys fastened to the grid at equal distances from each other, and in a line parallel to the footlights, make it possible to support a drop of almost any length. The ropes that go from the top of the drop to the pulleys should all be turned in the same direction (to the left in the illustration), run through a triple pulley, and down toward the floor to some place where they can be tied. Once every theater had a stout railing containing a series of pins around which the ropes could be tied. Sometimes this pin rail was on the floor, and sometimes it was placed up and out of the way in a raised gallery. There are many patented devices to-day by which drops are counterbalanced, and the hauling is often done by motors, so that old-fashioned pin rails which depended on muscles for the hauling are fast disappearing. A set of pulleys and ropes so arranged that they hold a drop is called a set of lines. The more sets a theater has the easier it is to handle scenery.