Special Effects
In the acknowledgements to Point of Dreams, we listed a man named Frank Mohler, then a professor at Appalachian State University, “whose presentation on the development of scenic spectacle at the 1999 Southeastern Theatre Conference in Greensboro, North Carolina, gave us entirely too many ideas.” We only knew Professor Mohler through that talk, and I don’t know that he wouldn’t be appalled to know what he started, but it was a wonderful lecture, and exactly what we were looking for at the time.
Lisa and I had just started plotting Point of Dreams, and knew it would take place in and around Astreiant’s theater district; we also knew that Philip Eslingen would become deeply involved in the annual Midwinter Masque, which has political, social, and magical consquences for Astreiant and for the entire realm of Chenedolle. We already knew a fair amount about Elizabethan and Jacobean theater and stagecraft, but Astreiant’s theaters were different — unlike Elizabethan theaters, they were mostly indoors, and they made full use of scenery and stage effects. And that meant more research.
As it happened, Lisa was an editor at Heinemann Books US, overseeing their theater and theater in education lines, and as a result was a regular at the Southeast Theatre Conference. I tagged along to help with the booth, something I did fairly often, and we are both delighted to see Professor Mohler’s presentation on the program. Given Lisa’s schedule, I was the lucky one who got to attend, and headed out with my notebook at the ready. I didn’t realize how good it was going to be.
The talk covered a number of theaters, some of which were known from surviving plans and diagrams, and a few of which had actually survived with the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century machinery mostly intact. There was even one in Sweden where the eighteenth-century machinery was all still in place, and potentially functional. There were many, many pictures, and, best of all, both computer-animated and practical models to show how the systems worked. The later systems in particular were similar to early nineteenth-century New England factories, where there was a central power shaft that was permanently in motion, and technicians slipped leather bands on and off the shaft to power the various piece of machinery. In one theater’s case, the shaft was moved by manpower — a central device very similar to a ship’s capstan; many of the stagehands would have been former sailors used to handling the many backstage ropes — and an enormous set of gears transferred the power from the capstan to the shaft. The triangular “practicals,” each face hung with a different piece of scenery to aid in quick changes of scene, also came from that theater, while the carved and painted “waves” that rose through gaps in the stage floor and the larger “waves” that could be brought crashing down from the wings came from a different building. The machinery was complex, effective, and, by modern health and safety standards, insanely dangerous. It was perfect. I took copious notes, collected an extra copy of the handout (there were links to the models!) and hurried back to the dealers’ room where Lisa was waiting.
“I have the best ways to kill people at our theater,” I announced, which was perhaps not the most tactful thing I could have said. Fortunately, no one was paying attention, and that night we were able to go over the details and choose the major deaths that would occur thanks to each of the mechanisms. We revised the plan of the theater to accommodate the new devices, adjusted the details of the plays to take full advantage of them, and generally spent the weeks after the conference geeking out. By the time we finished the final draft, we knew the theater inside and out, and had used every piece of machinery to its fullest effect.
And it really is all because of that one lecture. Professor Mohler, we owe you a debt — without your scholarship, we would never have managed so many deaths with quite such style.