Revolving stage

A revolving stage is a mechanically controlled platform within a theatre that can be rotated in order to speed up the changing of a scene within a show. A fully revolving set was an innovation constructed by the hydraulics engineer Tommaso Francini for an elaborately produced pageant, Le ballet de la délivrance de Renaud, which was presented for Marie de Medici in January 1617 at the Palais du Louvre and noted with admiration by contemporaries. Such a stage is also commonly referred to as a turntable.

Kabuki theatre development[edit]

Background[edit]

Kabuki theatre began in Japan around 1603 when Okuni, a Shinto priestess of the Izumi shrine, traveled with a group of priestesses to Kyoto to become performers. Okuni and her nuns danced sensualized versions of Buddhist and Shinto ritual dances, using the shows as a shop window for their services at night.^[1] They originally performed in the dry river bed of the River Kamo on a makeshift wooden stage, but as Okuni’s shows gained popularity they began to tour, performing at the imperial court at least once. Eventually, they were able to build a permanent theatre in 1604, modeled after Japan's aristocratic Nōh theatre which had dominated the previous era. Kabuki, with its origins in popular entertainment, drew crowds of common folk, along with high-class samurai looking to win their favorite performer for the night. This mixing of social classes troubled the Tokugawa Shogunate, who stressed the strict separation of different classes. When rivalries between Okuni’s samurai clients grew too intense, the shogunate took advantage of the conflict and banned women from performing onstage in 1629. The women were replaced by beautiful teenage boys who took part in the same after-dark activities, leading Kabuki to be banned from the stage completely in 1652. An actor-manager in Kyoto, Murayama Matabei, went to the authorities responsible and staged a hunger strike outside their offices.^[2] In 1654 Kabuki was allowed to return with restrictions. The shogunate declared that only adult men with “shaved pates” were allowed to perform, the shows must be fully acted plays and not variety shows, and actors had to remain in their own quarter of the city and refrain from mixing with the general public in their private life.^[3] With the dampened sensuality of Kabuki theatre, performers turned to exploiting art and spectacle to keep their audiences engaged.

The Genroku period of 1688 saw the solidification of the aesthetics of Kabuki under the new restrictions placed by the shogunate. Nōh theatre of the previous period was the theatre of aristocrats. After the embarrassment Kabuki brought to upper class society, it needed to develop into a more serious art form in order to survive. However, Kabuki theatre did not lose the influence of its origins as popular entertainment. A majority of the Kabuki repertoire was adapted from Bunraku puppet theatre, another popular entertainment of the same period.^[4] New innovations had to be made to adapt small scale puppet theatre into full scale plays, as well as elevate the source material to a higher class of art.

As a designer lays out the taverns, houses, and cobblestone streets to have sectioned off on the circular set, he could imagine an actor walking from one location to the next as a part of the scene. Some directors even employed the rotation of the stage with a purposeful view from the audience allowing them to see the characters walk from one setting to the next.

The sectioned design created wall structures to build usually costly sets on. The structure provided for much more interesting scenic designs, especially when concerning the outdoor hills and mountains. The angled frames of the stage dividers were often used to support tree structures or tall rolling hills.

Time was the biggest problem solved by the revolving stage. There was a particular problem with Shakespearean plays that required so many changes of scenery that some runs were as long as one could imagine a 20-act play would be. Using the revolving stage, the scene changes were a fraction of their previous length. It only took the time to rotate a 1/4 or even a 1/6 way around the circular stage.

Other uses[edit]

Today revolving stage are primarily used in marketing and trade shows and constructed in a modular design that can be set up and taken down quickly in different types of venues. Driven from the central core or indirectly from an external hub, these stages take advantage of rotating ring couplers to provide rotating power to the stage deck so there is no twisting of power cords or need to reverse the stage. In many cases the stage is left rotating for days at a time, carrying a load up to an SUV.

The revolving stage is also sometimes used at concerts and music festivals, especially larger ones, to allow one band to set up and check their equipment while another opening band is performing. This allows for a much faster transition between an opening band and the next one on the lineup. One such example was the Goose Lake International Music Festival, held in Michigan in August, 1970.^[18]

A notable revolving stage show that is used for the concept for Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress in Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida just outside of Orlando Florida, where the stage remains stationary while the auditorium revolves around it.

Stagecraft

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MacGowan, Kenneth. The Theatre of Tomorrow. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1921. Print.

Ortolano, Benito. The Japanese theatre: from shamanistic ritual to contemporary pluralism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.

Randl, Chad. Revolving architecture. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008. Print.

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WPG, . The Revolving Stage at the Munich Royal Residential and Court Theatre. New York: American Architect and Architecture, 1896. Print.