Technical Design Solutions for Theatre

Tim Fricker

A Light-Sensitive Portable Practical

 

Battery-operated practicals whose performance can be remotely controlled are certainly not new. Like others, the wireless practical described in this article can be brought onstage fully lit, left unattended, and will dim out as the result of a fade to black. But, rather than being controlled by a dimmer, this particular design uses a photoresistor to make it fade up and down in response to the changes in the ambient stage lighting: as the stage fades up, so does the practical: and as the stage goes to black at a scene’s end, this practical goes out as well.

The schematic in Figure 1 illustrates the simplest prototype of this device, which was designed as a class project. The basic components ...