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Show NEW STAGE TEICKS. ILLUSIONS INVENTED AND WORKED BY SCENIC ARTISTS. . Modern Thunder Apparatus and Moon and Son Boxes Ships That Tack and Seem to Be Drawing Nearer Rainstorms That Are Easy 'When Ton Enow How. Among the new contrivances in stage getting is an arrangement for lighting windows in- houses painted on drops. The old way was to cut out the windows win-dows from the canvas in the scene and paint them on thin muslin, which was pasted over the holes. Then when darkness dark-ness came on and the effect of lighted windows in the houses was needed a bunch light was placed behind the drop and shown through the transparent muslin. This, however, had the disadvantage disad-vantage of lighting all the windows in all the houses at once, a happening which obviously would be very unreaL So Mr. Josef Physioc, the scenio artist of the Herald- Square theater, got up a contrivance by which shutters, worked with a system of cords, were rigged behind each window. By pulling the cord the (shutters in different parts of the scene fell down and allowed the light to shine through. This gives the effect of a street being lit up naturally. "The wind machine now-in use," continued Mr. Physioo, "is made much on the same style of the ordinary windlass, wind-lass, with the exception that the drum, instead of being solid, is made like a water wheel, over which is stretched a strong piece of ribbed silk, which is pulled tight or left loose according to the wished for effect. All that is necessary neces-sary to get the right noise is to turn a crank, and you can have a gentle zephyr or a gale, asyoupleasa " The rain effect is produced by a machine ma-chine about the shape of a cheesebox, the sides of which are wood and the face made of wire gauze. A handful of double shot is turned by a crank and the pease kept rattling around. The more simple and ordinary method meth-od of making rain noise, Mr. Physioo explained, was to pour shot on the head of a bass drum, first one way and then the other, with a rotary motion. "It was only a few years ago, "he continued, "that to gettheso rain effects we used to rub the backs of the scenes with, the sandpaper and whistle and moan." There are several way3 of making stage thunder. The newest way is to use a little cart with cog wheels and filled with stones. As this is pushed along, it gives the desired rumble and roar. The most popular way, however, is to rattle a piece of sheet iron, which is hung in the first entrance for that especial purpose in nearly all theaters. Still another wy is to roll a cannon ball around the back of the stage and down the dressing room or subcellar stairs. ln his operatic productions it used to be customary to build a winding wind-ing trough for the ball to roll in from the fly gallery down to the stage. Many managers think that the very best grade of thunder can be got from a base drum manipulated by an experienced property man. . Moonrise and sunrise,! if done properly, proper-ly, ere both difficult effects to produce. They are both worked the same. ' "Of course, "said Mr. Physioc, ' 'each artist has his own ideas as to the best way to produce the effect The simple way is, after the scene is painted, to make the spots you wish the moon or sun to rise through. Then take the scene off the paint frame and cut out the parts that are to be transparent. The drop is then turned face down and the transparent material carefully glued over. The scene is put on the frame again, and the transparent parts painted eo that the scene is exactly the same as before. When the scene is set and the moon rises, it only shows when passing the transparent parts, giving the effect of rising through Clouds. "The most effective way is to have the drop made of fine bleached muslin. Paint the sunrise on the back and opaque the parts which you do not wish to be transparent. Then turn the scene around, and on the other side paint the effect you want before the sunrise. I used this method in painting the first act scene for 'Rob Roy' with very satisfactory sat-isfactory results. " The breaking of dawn is made by turning up the bunch lights behind the drop gradually. For sunrise itself a cal cium is turned on. "Moonboxes" and "sunboxes" are the same. They consist simply of a reflector re-flector in a box behind an electric light bulb or a gas jet with a base connection. connec-tion. The box is made to turn in a grooved upright and is raised by a cord running through a pulley at the top. Perhaps the most complicated of all stage illusions are the water and nautical nauti-cal devices. To represent a ship sailing into a harbor, tacking and constantly growing larger, requires clever stage handling. The ship is painted in three parts the . bow, amidships and the stern. These sections are fastened together to-gether about four feet apart with rubber rub-ber bands. A "grip" works them from behind. The ship is run across the stage from the upper entrance and back again, looking to the audience as though it tacked. New York Herald. |
