Turntable
The revolving stage in the theater is a circular area in the stage floor that can be rotated. A revolving platform is permanently installed, extends over the entire lower stage and can therefore also contain lifting platforms and lowering devices . Sometimes it is combined with trolleys, lifting platforms (double-decker turntable) and separately rotating rotating rings. It allows a quick change of the stage setting. It is a delightful effect when it is shot in an open scene.
history
Leonardo da Vinci already drew a revolving stage around 1490. The Japanese kabuki theater had a revolving stage on wooden rollers (“mawari butai”) since the second half of the 18th century.
The revolving stage was developed for the European theater to enable the cumbersome, illusionistic equipment stages of the 19th century to transform scenes more quickly . It was built for the first time by the royal Bavarian court theater machinist Carl Lautenschläger in the Residenztheater in Munich and originally measured around 16 meters in diameter. The disk was already rotated with an electric drive . The first test took place in May 1896 in Munich on the occasion of a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni .
In a lecture given at the General Assembly of the German Shakespeare Society with the title Which system of scenery is best suited for the representation of complex classical dramas, especially Shakespeare's? Ernst von Possart explained the revolving stage, which was first set up in the Munich Residenz Theater, and characterized its advantages:
- “Just imagine the whole podium as empty, all the backdrops removed. The bare floor contains a rotating, round disc that forms a circle so large that it extends from the prompter's box to the furthest depth of the theater, and to the left and right close to the side walls. The first decoration of the piece is set up on the front half of this circle: it looks the audience straight in the face. Behind it stands back to back with the first scene, on the previously hidden half of the turntable, the second decoration is already finished.
- When the first scene is played, the disc is turned around by an electric motor and the second decoration takes the place of the first; this is now in the back, invisible to the audience. - They are cleared away and, while the second scene unfolds, a new third stage set is placed in the empty space. - Scene 2 is over, the disc turns again and decoration 3 comes to the front.
- One can now use the turntable in any way according to the needs of the work to be represented; you can only cover a quarter or fifth of the circle with a short decoration in order to gain even more leeway for the following. "
Other early facilities with a revolving stage were the winter garden in Berlin , the former New Playhouse on Berlin's Nollendorfplatz and the Coliseum in London . Max Reinhardt's use of the revolving stage is famous in his production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1903 in the New Theater Berlin.
The cylinder turntable or rotary cylinder stage , a further developed form, was invented by Sepp Nordegg . It has built-in lifting platforms . The first such stage was installed in the Vienna Burgtheater in 1954 .
With a diameter of 29 meters, the Neuschwanstein Festival Hall in Füssen has the second largest revolving stage in Germany. The largest revolving stage in the world is located in the Frankfurt Opera . It was built in 1951 and completely renovated in 1987 after a fire. A lifting platform measuring 15 × 3 meters and a smaller rotating platform with a diameter of 16 meters are integrated into the large revolving platform with a diameter of 37.40 meters. The Musiktheater Linz has a transport turntable with a diameter of 32 m, in which a play turntable with a diameter of 15 m is embedded.
turntable
The turntable, on the other hand, is a flat structure on a conventional fixed stage. Stages with turntables are often used when the structural conditions under the stage mean that there is not enough space to load the stage with props from below using lifting devices .
With turntables, the load is absorbed by many individual rollers. In order to reduce the friction and to protect the stage floor, metal sheets are mounted under the running wheels. The disc is driven either by hand, via a motor that drives a friction wheel that presses horizontally against a running rail or vertically on the stage floor, or via a pinion that engages in a chain or a toothed ring.
In the Vienna Volkstheater there was a turntable until the 1980s, which was moved by a dozen stage workers standing on the disc by using crutches to support themselves against the stage floor.
Transportable turntables are also used outside of theaters for presentations (e.g. for cars) and are often also called turntables.
See also
Web links
- Under the revolving stage of the London Coliseum (old postcard)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ernst von Possart: Which system of scenery is best suited for the representation of multi-faceted classical dramas, especially Shakespeare's? : Lecture given at the General Assembly of the German Shakespeare Society on April 23, 1901 , in: Yearbook of the German Shakespeare Society , Volume 37, 1901; S. [XVIII] -XXXVI, here S. XXXIf. Digitized