The Book of the Panto
A guide to staging a production in
Shiplake Memorial Hall
The purpose of this booklet is to capture some of the knowledge and experience SHADDO members have gained over the past few years in staging a number of major productions in the Shiplake Memorial Hall. It is hoped that this will give encouragement and help to SHADDO members who may not have had direct experience in previous productions to tackle the challenging but rewarding task of staging a major production.
Although this is a book about “how we did it” it is NOT a book about “how things must be done”. One of the most enjoyable aspects of a production is trying something new and finding ways to make it work. Our venue, the Shiplake Memorial Hall, is a wonderful venue but it falls far short of being a theatre and much of our experience relates to working within the confines it imposes.
It is intended that this shall be a ‘living book’, rather than a once-off guidebook. As time goes by sections will be completed, revised or added as experience and circumstances change. At all times it should remain specific to the facilities of SHADDO and the Memorial Hall – general stagecraft is amply covered by the professional press!
Contents
Rehearsal Schedule and
Facilities
Appendix B Memorial Hall Plans
Appendix C List of Equipment Assets
Much of the fun (?) in designing sets for performances at the Memorial Hall is in finding ways to get round the limitations of the hall. These include:
· A low ceiling – no room for fly curtains
· Green room entry from stage left only. There is a small offstage area stage right but with no separate exit. For many of our productions we have constructed a narrow passageway at the rear of the stage to allow entries stage left and right.
· Very limited storage in the wings or in the areas adjacent to the stage. This typically means that set items have to be ‘flat-pack’.
On the other hand there is some flexibility – we have constructed apron stages for major performances, allowing scenes to be performed in front of the main tabs (curtains) and entries to be made downstage right, and we have run mid-curtains to divide the stage area into two
There is a rail about 2ft from the back of the stage attached to three cords that go through the ceiling over three pulleys and down to the side of the stage. We have attached painted backcloths this to rail. The backcloths are made to measure out of calico. We have a number of these – see Appendix C for a current list. Ordering details are as follows:
“Calico backdrop curtain made to the following dimensions with ties at the top and a pocket at the base: Width 5.44m Drop 3.45m”. Cost is around £250. We have ordered these previously from Lancelyn Theatre Supplies who can get them made up in a couple of weeks, but any theatrical source would do.
Transferring a design to a backcloth can be tricky. We have tried various methods:
1. Using a projector to project an image onto the suspended backdrop and using a soft pencil to mark out the images. We have had mixed success with this because the backcloth hangs free and moves when you mark it. Perhaps an airbrush or charcoal could be tried instead of a pencil.
2. Draw a grid on the design and the backcloth and transfer the design block by block. This can be done with the backcloth on the floor so it’s much easier to mark the cloth. But it can take more time and can be less accurate.
3. Freehand design onto the cloth. Best for those with a very good artistic eye as it is easy to lose sight of the overall effect.
We have also tried different methods of painting the backcloth. The main challenges are finding enough space to lay the backcloth out and enough time to let it dry. If there are a number of backcloths to be painted this poses a logistical challenge as the Hall is used so frequently. One approach we’ve used successfully is to book the Church Room for 2 or 3 days. A backcloth dries quite quickly – even when lying on the floor after 2 days a backcloth is dry enough to be folded.
In theory we can re-paint backcloths – both the cloths and the paints we use are designed for multiple use. However, to date we haven’t repainted a cloth!
A flat is a timber frame covered with calico cloth. We have bought a few of these and have made a couple of our own. They are all made to a standard height of 3m as this allows us to stack them upright at the bottom of the tower. The flats we own are listed in Appendix C. In professional theatre flats are braced to stage weights in order to make them stand upright on stage but we normally find it a lot easier to brace them to the stage walls, hooking the braces over the top of the electrical trunking above the panelling. We do however have one proper brace and stageweight.
We have a number of curtains. These are listed in Appendix C. Wing curtains have ties to the top of them so that they can be attached to a metal rod. This is then suspended from a rail at the side of the stage. The other curtains also have ties to the top and pockets at the bottom so that they can be weighted. We bought a large number of key rings that can be threaded onto a wire across the stage and to which the curtain ties are attached.
We also have a transparent gauze curtain. This can be used to create a visual effect – a hidden scene behind the curtain can (in theory) be made to appear by moving illumination from in front of to behind the curtain.
For a major production it is useful to have the flexibility to perform in front of the main tabs while a scene change takes place behind. We have developed a standard arrangement for extending the stage, which consists of a simple extension of the stage in front of the curtain and a side extension at a slightly lower level ( the apron stage).
The construction of the stage extension is straightforward. Eight full length (13’) scaffold planks are supported on six builders trestles. The trestles are nominally “No 2” Trestles but we have had problems with oversize trestles in recent years so it is best to confirm the height first. The correct size trestle, fortuitously, matches the height of the stage, which ranges from 900mm to 915mm (round about 36”).
The apron stage is constructed using four smaller trestles (No 1) supporting a number of 4x2 beams on which a chipboard t&g floor is laid.
We normally get the trestles and scaffold planks from Southern Plant Hire, who sometimes give us a discount when we say what they are for.
A rough schematic is shown below.
Since new carpeting was laid on the stage floor we have created an overlay floor on top of it. This consists of plastic sheeting to protect the carpet and a series of sheets of standard flooring grade chipboard (from Wickes). The sheets are numbered and installed in order. The diagram below shows the initial arrangement of sheets for the main stage. There are additional sheets to cover the stage extension. All sheets are currently stored in one of the Hall’s garages.
The hall is well equipped with a theatre quality lighting system. It was installed progressively over the course of 5 or so years by Gareth Jones and Steve Watkins. There are wired rails above the stage (front and mid) and off the front and rear beams in the hall. There are also a couple of floor level outlets on the stage and to the front of the stage.
SHADDO has a good range of lanterns and is capable of lighting simple productions with its own facilities but for major productions we hire additional equipment.
Some technical detail:
· Lighting control is by DMX. We have dimming capabilities for 12 channels and normally extend this to 18 channels for major productions by hiring in a 6-way dimmer pack.
· Each channel can support 2KW of lighting, but the total must not exceed the 60Amp capacity of the single phase supply.
· We have two control panels – an 18 channel manual desk and a 24 channel electronic desk.
· There are two DMX control points: one is located on just above the stairs to the stage, the other is in the patch frame at the rear of the hall.
Appendix C contains a list of the current SHADDO lighting assets.
The Memorial Hall is pre-wired for sound for major productions. The original sound design was by Hugh Steele and installed by Hugh Steele and David Dalzell. Gareth Jones subsequently extended this to allow permanent connection of the main amplifiers.
The sound equipment consists of a professional mixer desk with an effects unit, some permanently wired microphones above stage, two stereo amplifiers and two speakers. For a major production this can be used in conjunction with the hall PA system to provide voice reinforcement, sound effects and foldback.
(‘Foldback’ speakers are directed towards performers so that they can hear sounds that are being projected to the audience.)
The Hall system is a mono PA system consisting of a mixer / amplifier and 4 speakers. There is a switch box near to the amplifier that can be operated to reroute the speaker wiring so that the hall amplifier drives the foldback speakers on stage and the two Shaddo amplifiers drive sound reinforcement using the hall loudspeakers and special effects using Shaddo speakers.
For a major production we normally hire in extra microphones. These are plugged into XLR sockets at the front right (from the audience) of the stage behind a cover. These connect back to the patch panel on the wall at the back of the hall.
Diagrams of the sound set-up, wiring diagrams of the mixer and operating instructions for the mixer are available separately.
SHADDO own a bubble machine and a snow machine. At present these are in the care or Liz James and Gareth Jones respectively. For any other special effects we normally hire in equipment. Our usual source is Henley Theatre Services.
We have hired smoke machines, rotating balls, ultra violet and Xenon flash units. We have also used pyrotechnics – though such use is not officially permitted in the hall.
A major limitation with both fog machines and pyrotechnics is the very poor ventilation in the hall, which means that even a small amount of smoke can take a long time to clear.
We have a number of seating layouts that we have used for different productions. There are strict regulations regarding the arrangement of seating – rake, access, gangway size etc – and the standard layouts take these into account. A typical example is shown below.
The total seating available in the above layout is 148 seats.
If the hall is used with no stage extension then the maximum capacity is 184 seats, subject to us getting enough chairs!
We normally produce our own tickets based on the seating layout for the show and with all seats assigned. Actual ticket production is done using Microsoft Word mail merge, using a label template and a Microsoft Excel data source. Once printed, A4 sheets are cut up into individual tickets.
Binfield Heath Stores and Shiplake Corner Shop have supported us in most major productions by selling tickets for us.
Our main get-in is normally the weekend before a production. We book the hall for exclusive use for the Saturday and Sunday. Saturday is the main get-in day and we use Sunday for technical and set preparation. For the last few years we have also reserved the previous Saturday morning to construct the stage extension. This has the advantage of reducing the amount of work to be done at get-in and also allowing a week of evening rehearsals with the full stage, but without the full set.
Get out is the Sunday morning after a production. Normally an 8.00am technical start and a 9.00am general start get everything cleared out by around 12.00. The last couple of years we have invited cast and crew members to bring some food and we all have a chinwag and consume left over drinks for the bar.
SCRIPT :
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Poor / OK
/ Good
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Casting
Are
there too few / enough / too many parts? |
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Script
Will we
have to do much modification / addition to the script? |
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Performance
Is
there a strong beginning and end to the panto? |
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Music & Dance
Are
there enough opportunities for song & dance? |
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Production
Can we
stage it with the limited facilities of the Memorial Hall? |
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Audience
Does it
have appropriate audience interaction? |
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Other
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