Stage Machinery????????

Anon 2 quoted this on the Joseph thread.

they have i believe built new steps tho and have copied the new London design but taken out the inflatable sheep and cacti. The stage floor is the orignal one that houses the mouse and spade track which brings the stairs from the back rather than the floor and the light columns have also been shipped onto tour....the nodding egyptian dogs have never been used on any tour lol......so basically everything is rusty and dusty but they'll keep using anyway...until it physically falls to pieces!

I do not work in theatre, so know nothing about staging and would like to find out more, what is a mouse and spade track? What other sort of machinery do productions use in the stage?

There's a Legally Blonde video on Broadway.com where they show you how the tracks are built into the stage. You might want to check that out.

Edit: Double post!

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Updated On: 9/10/08 at 01:37 AM

They don't always have that option on the road. Sometimes they do.

In Australia we call them rabbits and knives. Interesting the differences between the countries. :)

I worked with a master electrician from England a number of years ago. During the first day of hang she started asking us to find her a splitter. Needless to say, we young college students just stared blankly at her for a moment before she remembered "Oh, you damn Americans call them two-fers."

(For those of you who don't know, a two-fer, or a splitter, is a pair of electric cables that join together to allow two lights to be put into the same circuit.)

Not to mention hanging out with the splitters...