Hanging the Show Curtain

We are not using our red velour Grand Drape for this production. It doesn't fit the style of this show. But we are using an unpainted muslin backdrop instead. This will allow us to do pre-show projections as well as the shadow of the movie theater announcement of Eva Peron's death.

Here, my Stagecraft class is hanging the 26 foot tall white drop on Line One, where it will share the batten with our 8 foot tall Valance border. (Click pics to enlarge).


The 25 pound curtain is held on by shoelace-style tie lines every foot on the 56 foot long top webbing. These may seem like small strings to hold such weight, but the weight is distributed very evenly.


Next, I had the crew insert pipe at the bottom of the drop to keep it taught. I use galvanized pipe that is intended for supporting chain-link fence. It is very cheap and comes in 10 foot lengths. Plus it has very handy couplers at each end that join together like tent poles, see photo:


The pipes are slid into the chain pocket at the bottom of the backdrop. And I put a piece of gaffer's tape at each joint so that the pipes don't separate inside the pocket as we pull them out during strike.


Finally, I always trim off the excess pipe with a metal-cutting saw. You don't want extra pipe sticking out of a drop because an actor standing in the wrong place could get disemboweled as the pipe flies out, (something us Tech Directors always need to be mindful of). The pipe is now exactly the same length as the drop, so the sharp ends are not poking out.


Now the drop is ready to test! We hung a 500 watt fresnel spotlight behind the drop to test the sequence in the opening scene where the "movie" is stopped for the announcement of Evita's death.