Technical Design Solutions for Theatre

Chuck Adomanis

An Irising Portal

The design for the 1997 Yale Repertory Theatre’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream featured a soft-covered full-stage portal that opened, like an iris, for a scene change. The designer wanted the portal legs and header to form a single plane, and the audience’s proximity required that the rig operate quietly. Meeting these objectives produced the rig described here.

FIGURE 1: SR END OF PORTAL — REAR VIEW; SL END IS R&R

Though the unit needed only to iris out, we rigged it to work in both directions to speed resetting. As shown in Figure 1, the portal legs traveled on a track that was built into the header as its bottom ...