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Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: Fly cues
« on: Sep 04, 2011, 04:51 pm »
While safety is important to everything we do I am particularly attentive to safety with flys. I work in that academic world so I am often training people who have good theatre experience but sometimes have never run a fly rail before. I usually explain to them that running a fly rail is one of the most dangerous positions, not because you can hurt yourself like you can doing most things in theatre but that you can really hurt someone else that has no idea or control over what is happening. As BayAreaSM said, you should always have someone watching in line with the fly. During a show you can't announce things flying like you can during rehearsals and load in/outs so making sure everyone knows when to expect things to move is critical so that an actor or other crew person doesn't try to run under the pipe at the last moment not knowing that it is coming in fast. This should all be worked out in detail during rehearsal, especially if the movement of a fly does involve people crossing the line while the particular fly is unlocked and moving. You should have someone that is very trustworthy and safety conscious running the fly rail and if you have the option of having someone on the other side of the stage also watching than that is great.
When actually calling a fly cue, you would do it much like any other cue. You may want to give warnings early enough so that the fly operator can review the next move and check for any obstructions on stage, in the air, or in their line of sight. Then you watch for as much safety as you can making sure people are where they should be during the call from whatever your vantage point is and hopefully you can trust that the fly operator and any other available deck crew are also watching for safety.
You can't stop a show, turn all the lights on, clear the deck, and slowly bring in each fly to make sure that there is no chance of things going wrong so you have to put good trust worthy people in key positions and rehearse each move to make it as safe as possible. Keeping everyone informed of everything is important. You may have wardrobe crew that have nothing to do with set changes standing on the side of the stage or moving to a quick change location in the dark, so you want to make sure that even they know the sequence of movements backstage so that when there is a new crew or cast that doesn't know everything, everyone else can be watching out for people in the wrong place. Even if things are changed such as cutting a particular drop from a scene due to a tear or something, make sure everyone knows what is going on so that no one is thrown off by the change in sequence and can be paying particular attention to things being different backstage.
When actually calling a fly cue, you would do it much like any other cue. You may want to give warnings early enough so that the fly operator can review the next move and check for any obstructions on stage, in the air, or in their line of sight. Then you watch for as much safety as you can making sure people are where they should be during the call from whatever your vantage point is and hopefully you can trust that the fly operator and any other available deck crew are also watching for safety.
You can't stop a show, turn all the lights on, clear the deck, and slowly bring in each fly to make sure that there is no chance of things going wrong so you have to put good trust worthy people in key positions and rehearse each move to make it as safe as possible. Keeping everyone informed of everything is important. You may have wardrobe crew that have nothing to do with set changes standing on the side of the stage or moving to a quick change location in the dark, so you want to make sure that even they know the sequence of movements backstage so that when there is a new crew or cast that doesn't know everything, everyone else can be watching out for people in the wrong place. Even if things are changed such as cutting a particular drop from a scene due to a tear or something, make sure everyone knows what is going on so that no one is thrown off by the change in sequence and can be paying particular attention to things being different backstage.