Sunday, April 04, 2010
So You Want to Make it Rain…
Steppenwolf Theatre Company Blog: "“I want a rain system at my house,” somebody said as we listened to the torrent of water on stage. It was the Friday evening of technical rehearsals and we were doing the first official test of the rain system we had installed for Marcus; Or the Secret of Sweet. “It looks and sounds so cool. I want that in my living room.”"
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Well, that's pretty impressive. I think this post basically epetomizes how theater companies deal with a lot of problems. With a lot of research and some reworking of an existing system, they were able to create a rain system that worked within the constraints they were dealing with. They borrowed ideas from industrial and other industries in order to achieve their goals. It's great to see that ingenuity going to good use, especially considering that a rain effect is often a difficult to achieve within a theater space.
They make it sound so easy. This all goes to show how much work goes into creating theater magic. Often, the show behind the scenes can be much more interesting than the show on stage (ok, maybe I am a little bias). The ways in which we borrow, manipulate, and modify materials and processes from other industries is always spectacular. As many non-theatrical companies who do business with theaters know, we sometimes have strange requests and use products in ways that they were definitely not made for. All in the name of magic. And now, thanks to the technical innovation from the folks at Steppenwolf, their upstairs theater can have a rain effect with silent pumps.
This is the kind of project that makes working in the theater a lot of fun. If the designer says, "this is what has to happen," and the production manager says, "this is how much money you have," it then becomes the TD's challenge to make it happen. The process of creating this effect is both a creative and technical process, which is appealing to someone like me. I think reading the design process behind this effect is an incredibly effective tool for getting people interested in Technical Direction and is a great example of what the job of a TD is.
I am obsessed with rain. Rain onstage that it. It is something that is so limited, visually simple, but beyond difficult to create and that really intrigues me. I like pushing the boundary so when I saw Fuerza Bruta in Miami and watched it rain in a forty foot by eighty foot space, and on the audience, and I was amazed. Spellbound would probably be a better word. What seemed so simple to the audience took hours of work to create and thus protect the floor from damage. As this article shows, rain is no easy effect. IT may seem easy to an unknowing bystander but not theater artists. Now to build that rain effect in my living room.
Although making it rain is pretty tough,the problem that they had with a place for the water to come from could have been taken care of relatively easily if they had a drum with a sump pump not too far away from where they wanted to make it rain. Although this may not seem like a lot of water, with the right lighting, the amount of water that is needed may be diminished dramatically (pun intended). making it rain onstage though adds a whole new level of "getting lost" in the production.
I think it would be very cool to have rain in my house. I've learned from some people before how to make it rain onstage, and they're not kidding, it's very difficult, and you have to have the right kind of space to install the system. But the effect that it makes is fantastic. I'm always very excited to learn more tricks to help create a magical experience for the audience through effects like creating actual rain onstage.
Well that sounded fairly complicated to me. Looks like an entire build week for a senior thesis right there. I guess if you had time to tweak it, it would be a pretty cool project to work on.
I'd suggest doing it in the summer though, as I'm guess you'll want to test it outside...
So having water onstage is one of those things that just bring about red flags to just about everyone involved. It is good to see that as opposed to just doing the same thing over and over again, that people are thinking about better ways to deal with this kind of effect.
Just as in most other fields of theatre, this solution borrows from many other fields that would laugh if they saw the way in which we were using them. But it is this kind of ingenuity that breeds better solutions to common theatrical “problems.” Theatre creates the effect of real life onstage. And sometimes the most farfetched methods breed the most realistic results.
I can attest to how fervently Bryce loves rain on stage...
Everyone above have given great thoughts, and I'll just add that I would have liked to hear more about the largely unmentioned trial and error process that they went through to produce the right effect at the shop. The deflection screen is a brilliant idea, but it cannot have been arrived at immediately. It may be strange, but the most interesting thing to me was how much water actually evaporated as a result of the stage lighting. The things you never think about until it happens...
This is really awesome. I don't even want to know how much it cost in both money and labor, but yeah I'd want one in the entry way of my house haha.
As the producer, this would be my question to the designer....."Do you need the rain effect to tell the story? Cause with something like this, it's easy to get caught up in the "ohh it's cool lets do it" rather than understanding that the effect may not contribute to the story.
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