Every night onstage at the Goodman Theatre, an actress slips into a water-filled bathtub and actors fly through the air during “Big Love,” playwright Charles L. Mee’s contemporary take on a Greek tale. At the Civic Opera House, a huge fire erupted on stage on cue nightly during Lyric Opera of Chicago’s recent production of “Otello.” Water splashed across the stage of Chicago Shakespeare Theater earlier this year not because of a leaky roof, but because director Barbara Gaines wanted a fierce rainstorm in her production of “King Lear.”
Rolling fog. Reflecting pools. Flaming torches. Technical chiefs and production managers repeatedly have been asked by directors to create special effects involving earth, wind, fire and water. And while it may seem simple enough to capture those elements on stage during a live performance, getting them to “perform” on cue is another matter.
That’s not just because of the logistical challenges involved, but also because of municipal codes and Actors Equity guidelines that influence these kinds of effects. As a result, technical directors say taming these temperamental elements is one of the biggest theatrical challenges they face. We talked to them about some of their recent success stories.
It’s a dirty job
“Dirt is a menace for several reasons,” says Robert McGarvie, Steppenwolf Theatre’s technical director. “Even when the show closes, you never get it out of the theater. It finds a way of getting everywhere. And it causes more problems when you have a musical and there is dancing.”
McGarvie knows what he’s talking about. When Steppenwolf mounted “The Ballad of Little Jo” last year, a musical set in an Idaho mining town, getting authentic boulders on stage (so when the miners hit the rocks with their picks, it sounded real) was a simple matter compared to maintaining the large piles of dirt that the set required. McGarvie’s team used filtered earth, free of twigs and stones, then glued some of it to the set’s sloping landscape to limit the amount of loose dirt. Still, that darn dirt got everywhere.
The dust produced by dirt on stage — and its negative effects on the throats of performers — was a big issue for another show, Shakespeare Chicago Theater’s “Timon of Athens.” During the run of that 1997 show, the production team had to hide water, Band-Aids and throat lozenges onstage for the actor who spent much of the play digging in the dirt for gold.
Any earth used in a production must be maintained over the run of a production so that it doesn’t dry out, crack or sprout flora or fungi of any sort. Still, all that run-of-the-mill work is nothing compared to the dirt issues Steppenwolf faced with their 1994 production of “A Clockwork Orange.” “We had the evil combination of rain and dirt,” says McGarvie. (Translation: mud.) The crew “was doing laundry until 4 in the morning.”
Rain, drains and swimming pools
Water presents its own set of challenges. Keeping water warm enough to prevent actors from cringing when it hits them, controlling the water while it’s on stage, gauging its effect on scenery and costumes, then deciding where the wet stuff will go all must be considered. “Water will define every other element in the show because it has so many other things it affects,” says Jennifer Smith, production manager for Chicago Shakespeare. ” ‘Lear’ ran for nine weeks and we needed a deck that would stand rain on it every day.”
Then there’s the matter of water that falls from 30 feet above the stage: “There was a lot of bounce to the rain,” says Smith, who solved the problem of splashing the audience by moving the rain unit away from the edge of the stage. As for the actors? Fresh dry clothing was kept backstage. And a stage outfitted with drains or grates usually solves the problem of what to do with the water after it hits the stage.
And then there are fountains, which were used during Goodman’s production of “Garden” this year. According to the script, the fountain has been clogged for centuries but decides to work again at a crucial moment, explains production manager Les Kniskern. “We spent hours changing nozzles and adjusting the water pressure to get it to look right,” he notes.
Maintaining a pool, such as the one used for Lookingglass Theatre’s “Metamorphoses,” is yet another matter. “We constructed a 24-foot square pool with a walkway around it,” recalls Lookingglass set designer Daniel Ostling. “At night, we put a heater and filter in it to keep it warm. [And] it was treated like a regular pool with chlorine and changed every couple weeks.”
Burning issues
A director’s vision of what a fire should look like is one thing. Having it abide by municipal fire codes is another matter. Drew Landmesser, technical director at Lyric Opera, needed to produce a big fire for “Otello,” similar to the one director Sir Peter Hall had just used for the opera in England. But there, they had used propane gas to produce 5-foot-tall flames.
“The bonfire had to have visual importance,” says Landmesser. But Chicago does not allow the use of propane gas on stage, so the technical team made steel logs and welded them into a tall pile. “This was then covered with a [special] paste,” he says. When the “logs” were lit, he explains, the fire looked imposing because the burning structure was so large — even though the flames were only a few inches tall.
At Steppenwolf, a special asbestos-lined “fire box” was developed for “The Grapes of Wrath” in 1988 and is still being used today, most recently this summer in “Hedda Gabler.” “In ‘Hedda Gabler,’ she has to burn a letter. By her burning the evidence, it reveals a lot about the show,” says Steppenwolf’s McGarvie. As the flames burned in the fire box, which was set into the floor of the stage, Hedda (actress Martha Plimpton) slid the document into a slot cleverly concealed by the blaze.
When productions decide to avoid real flames altogether, they turn to the magic of gossamer-thin silks, fans and the sounds of a crackling fire.
Blowin’ in the wind
When the Goodman’s interim production manager, Les Kniskern, first saw the script for “Big Love,” the exuberant athletics caught his eye. “There is a lot of acrobatics in the show,” he recalls. “So the [stage] floor itself begins with a spring floor, with plywood on top of that. It is then layered with foam pieces that are attached together. And on top is the final cover.” Due to the super-bouncy floor, he says the actors “are able to leap off chairs and land on their backs and sides.”
But most folks try to avoid the furious air: wind. “To have wind, you have to have something blowing in it,” says Lyric Opera’s technical director, Drew Landmesser. And while leaves blowing and hair blowing can be dramatic, it’s a challenge for singers who spend a lot of time on stage with their mouths open.
Over at Chicago Shakespeare, Deb Acker, production stage manager, says “We haven’t been able to do [wind] quietly enough so it wouldn’t be intrusive … but we do a lot of fog. We need the moors.” Their fog is created from a union of dry ice, water and a fan that helps move the misty stuff to wherever it’s needed. Preventing the fog from rolling into the audience is a challenge, especially when air conditioning, the heat and the size of the audience can all affect this temperamental effect. “You can have a million fans and it won’t stay in the area you want on any given day,” says Acker.
