Theatre rigging hitch?

General Discussion
1

Some thirty-odd years ago, I remember being shown how to bind several theatre rigging lines together, in Vancouver, BC. I’m trying to recall the name and the exact technique for the knot.

There were three 3/4" hemp lines passing up from their positions along a horizontal pipe over the stage, through overhead blocks high above the fly gallery, across and down to a tie-off pin (like a belaying pin) on the rail on the fly floor. The pipe carried a piece of scenery which it was my job to fly in and out as part of a scene change during the show. Because the scenery piece needed to stay in trim and touch the floor just right when it was in, it was essential that the three lines stay together without shifting during use – if one of them slipped relative to the others, the pipe would sag in the middle or at one end. The lines were tied off tight to the pin at the final “in” position, but this tie-off wasn’t stable or precise enough to be sure to keep the scenery piece in good trim through the run of the show.

The solution, presumably well-known to theatre riggers (in those days at least), was to tie a knot with a smaller line, binding the three running lines together. The technical director – busy man – gave me the photocopied sheet of instructions (illustrated), sent me up to the fly floor, and told me to have a go.

The knot had a rolling hitch at one end – the lower end, I think – and wound from there, following the lay of the heavier lines, to tie off twelve or eighteen inches above. I forget just how it tied off at the top, but I recollect that it was tricky. Once it was tied properly – and I forget whether I was the one who accomplished this – it worked a treat, and the trim of the set piece didn’t have to be adjusted during the several week long run.

The knot was named, and I’m pretty sure it was referred to as some kind of hitch. I think I remember the tech director asking me whether I knew how to tie a such-and-such hitch. “Running hitch” or “rigging hitch” seem like likely possibilities, but I can’t find references to either of these and it may be that I’m confused by the fact that there was a rolling hitch involved. Is anyone familiar with this knot, and if so can you point me to some more information about it?

As an aside, that same technical director neglected to give me one crucial suggestion when he invited me to my first day’s work on the fly floor: “bring gloves”. Ow.

Stephen Aberle,
Vancouver, BC.

2

I enjoyed reading this post and it made me want to know more about theatre rigging. I have heard it’s like an old sailing ship in the back of some theatres.

3

Hi Stephen,

I have not done rigging for stage work for a very long time, but I recall that we used a variant of the rigger’s hitch at the top after the rolling hitch, to tie several fly lines together when needed. The rigger’s hitch is similar to the rolling hitch except that you jam the second turn up and over the first turn around the lines before making the second turn on the loaded side, thus locking the first turn well into the lines and applying some needed tension to the rolling hitch end. After that rigger’s hitch, taking several turns to complete with a slippery hitch was all we did. We used common window sash cord I think - is that still available in 100% cotton? The lines never came apart, but then I am not certain that any of us really knew what we were doing, so maybe we just got lucky? Probably now I would use a racking seizing or maybe a flat seizing, depending on the number of lines to put together. Now, I cannot promise you that is what you were taught, but this is what we did on stage during amateur theater runs in Exeter, UK at the Barnfield Theatre. Having progressed from being behind the stage I then was given several roles on stage as well - halcyon days! Thanks for bringing up this interesting topic - anyone else?

Lindsey

4

I don’t know what you are referring to, but it seems like a less-than-ideal solution. I can imagine as the bound “joint” rises the three ropes could diverge to different pulley locations and pry that hitch made of smaller rope apart.

Then, when the joint lowers, the binding might be loose and slip. That issue aside, such a setup also depends on the hitch being really tight and on the friction of the large ropes relative to one another.

What I have seen are bends that have one rope being joined to multiple ropes, with some type of sheet bend or other bend. I’ve also seen this one-to-many arrangement accomplished with interlocking end loops.

5

Hi Roo,

Probably I should have prefaced my response by saying “This is how we did it”? Our fly had two sets of blocks overhead, one set of 3 blocks with a single-sheave block at the top of each of three vertical risers from the fly pipe (3 blocks), the other, a lone triple-sheave block, at one end of the fly lines, then all three lines coming down to the rigging rail together. The lines would all stay together through the triple sheave and would all have the same distance to travel down through to the pipe, in order to set the scene/backdrop in place. They never got close enough to the triple sheave to stray apart, as you were suggesting they might. In some ways it is like a Venetian blind cord arrangement, all three lines coming together at one side and raising and lowering the piece together. Does that help, and have you ever seen the actual piece in operation like Stephen is asking about?

Lindsey

6

Hi Lindsey,
The most important part of your post is “This is how we did it”. Alice and I do not always get our rigging to perfection but “This is how we did it.” Also my Grand Dad and I rigged freight elevators and hay rigs for the barn and the “TIHWDI” must still apply. What is fun about the stage rigging is not that it is what you would do today but an authentacted oberservation of “This is how we did it”. With your later experience and skill you might have done something else but the documentation of “this is how we did it” goes far beyond “this would have been the best way.” I looked at stage rigging when I was visting “theater folk” and kept my mouth shut as I thought the professional must know more than me. They were using what worked. Hard to fault that. As the folk singer said “Could have done better but I don’t mind”. 10 points for naming the folk singer who sang that and each point gets you a cuppa Starbucks. Must be in Seattle to collect, hehhehehehe. ;D.

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Bob Dylan, of course. See you in Seattle one of these days (I’m in Vancouver) – but can we go to some little coffee place round the corner instead of SB’s? Or you come up here and we’ll go to Commercial Drive.

Thanks to all for the intriguing responses. Lindsey’s situation was similar to mine: three lines going up from the fly rail through a triple-sheave block, so the lines stayed together and avoided the danger alluded to by roo, of the knot working loose by the lines pulling apart. The one-rope-to-many solution roo offers is interesting but perhaps not appropriate to my case for several reasons: first, because getting and tying off the three lines in perfect trim would, I think, be a nightmare; second, because the pipe and scenery were heavy and a single line would be both difficult to haul and potentially not adequate for the weight; third, because at the end of the run of the show we would need to rearrange the pipes and lines, and the three-to-one arrangement contrived for that pipe, for that show, wouldn’t necessarily work for the next setup.

I want to point out that the setup I described wasn’t typical, and arose from an unusual situation: a small but heavy set piece that had to come in and go out quickly and precisely, in a location where one of the the counterweighted and precisely tuned mechanical fly system pipes wasn’t available. In most cases where a pipe would be raised or lowered by hand, the piece would be light enough that the fly operator could maintain trim by hand (on the fly, as it were…) without having to bind the lines together in the way I’ve described.

I’m a newbie here and will try not to expound too heavily on matters of philosophy, but I will offer this observation on theatre construction in general and theatre rigging in particular: it is, like all crafts, characterized by its own set of peculiar circumstances which call for specialized responses. The question of which is the “right” knot (or flat-building or canvas-stretching or light-hanging technique) for a particular situation must be analyzed in light of the needs arising under those circumstances, which include…

  • Safety. The knot must work and work safely or tons of scenery will fall on the actors’ and crew’s heads, which is rarely (speaking as an actor myself) an ideal situation. The people on hand to do the job must be able to tie and maintain and re-tie and untie it as quickly, easily and above all safely as possible.

  • Speed. Things have to get done right now or the show won’t go on – and the show must go on.

  • Flexibility. In the theatres in which I was working, shows usually ran two to three weeks and after that the fly gallery had to be ready for the next show, which might involve many changes to which pipes were hanging where, how much was hanging on them etc. Elegant but permanent or hard to undo solutions wouldn’t serve.

  • Simplicity. Here we’re going to see differences among professional, semi-professional and amateur theatre, but even in the professional theatre there will be green young folk helping out, and there may not be time to teach them my ideal of the “perfect” but perhaps complicated solution. There are about six or eight knots that serve in almost every situation in the theatre, and a few more one might see in a very few unusual situations (like the one I described, for example).

So it’s partly, but not entirely, a case of “TIHWDI” which (to my sensitive eyes) hints at the suggestion that we poor fools didn’t quite know what we were doing. (I’m quite prepared to acknowledge that I didn’t, and don’t, know what I’m doing, but I’ll defend with savage and ferocious loyalty the genius of that long line of my sage stage ancestors, The Old Timers).

I humbly offer, therefore, the simpler alternate acronym “TW”: This Works.

Best to all, Stephen.

8

Hi Stephen,
Good post! I hope it was not my “TIHWDI” that was painful! I like the “TW” but unfortunately sometimes the way we did it didn’t work very well :cry: (where I grew up). After all, my brother and I building a Hot Rod in a second floor bedroom fully qualifies for “TIHWDI” but not “TW”. Or perhaps “this works but not very well”, which gives others a chance to learn from my mistakes. No matter how fancy you rig for lifting, hotrods and upper story bedrooms don’t mix.
I most surely didn’t intend to suggest that your fellow set riggers (gaffers, is that the word) were poor fools. Far from it. That is why I kept my mouth shut at my brush with off broadway. My assumption that the professionals must know more than me was of course true and an obsertation on my awareness (even then) of my ignorance. The same thing happened when I came to PNW. These logger fellows, what can they be thinking?.. but by keeping my mouth shut I learned some good stuff.
By the way, you can double your trivia points (working toward coffee and a espresso brownie) by knowing Bobs real name.
Good to hear from you again. Is theater rigging documented? Just a thought.

9

Robert Allen Zimmerman - too easy Roy ;)! You asked about theatre rigging - yes, I have a book all about it, written in the 50’s or 60’s I think - now I have to go to my storage area and fish it out! I’ll let you know what I find ;D
After all this, Stephen, what was the name of the knot? Inquiring minds want to know!
Lindsey

10

Hi Lindsey,
No, No, do not spend time digging in boxes. Just to know it was documented. All in print will somehow find the way to electronic. You know there is a book. Sit down and relax. For one thing, unless you donate the book to IGKT-PAB library, where I can borrow it, I’ll never know. Unless we change the copy write law so we can scan public domain books into the web I’ll never download it… and unless I just need to work the stage I’ll not have to work the knots this week. Not that I am not interested in learning every knot for every task, as I am, but the whole idea is to put it all into the digital cd rom world as well as hard copy on every shelf.
Here is one for you. As a published author, who worked very hard to produce several very fine books, at what point can your efforts become public domain… free to all? I’m not up on copywrite law this week but I think it was 14 years when I was writing. Can’t remember (can’t remember breakfast). When is a copy of ABOK copy write infringement? When is a copy of your book or Budworth or Toss an infringement? I know this has nothing to do with knotting but at the side issue it does.. how do we get material?

11

Hello there everyone. I’m new here, but I think I’ll fit right in.

I work at one of the few road-house theatres in North America which is a fully-rigged “hemp house”, in Victoria BC. The fly system here is the rope-and-sandbag type which Stephen encountered in Vancouver so long ago - perhaps at the Orpheum, before the renovation?

Anyway, we use several different means to attach sandbags to line-sets (5 lines per, in our case), and among them are what we call the bag-tie and the barrel knot. (These are our local terms, not to be confused with other knots of the same name.)

There are variations, but in essence the bag-tie is made by taking a series of wraps up the line-set, with the bitter end captured beneath the wraps, and is finished off by passing the working end through the lineset. The sandbag is then attached to the tail of the working end. The resulting wedging action makes things quite tight and secure, but the bag-tie is then difficult to undo.

For the barrel knot, the wraps are taken over the working end, and the bitter end is half-hitched around the line-set (but not the working end) at the top of the wraps.

Photos to follow.

Tom

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Here are photos of two knots used in the theatre for attaching a sandbag to a set of lines. Two lines are shown in these photos for clarity, but three or five would be common. The first variation of the so-called barrel knot can also be used on one line, or on a pipe.

http://chowboy.livejournal.com/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/70117068@N00/tags/knots/

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the bag-tie is then difficult to undo

Hmmm, I should think that–once the sandbag is either removed or raised up
to remove its loading of the hitch–it would be the easiest to untie, as it’s only
the squeeze between the two object lines that holds it. --and this squeeze
is present in the two-object-lines-particular version (2nd) of the “barrel” knot,
in a half-hitch.

–dl*

14

Ah… The load, that is to say the scenery, would still be present at the other end of the line-set after the sandbags are removed, which I didn’t mention. Adding to that, if the sandbags were heavy and the knot were settled in hard, it may be a bit difficult to undo both the “bag-tie” and the second “barrel knot” having the buried half-hitch. The first version of the “barrel knot” is preferred for heavier pieces because of this, even though it might possibly be less secure.

th

15

Then it should be a simple matter to put in a Slip-knot stopper,
or to lightly jam the end between the object lines, to secure
the closing HHitch of the Rolling H (Barrel knot).

(-;

16

Hi All,

I’ve been away from the Forum for a while and was just going through some old posts and came accross this, which is a subject close to my heart.

I worked for many years in a provincial theatre, on the south coast of England, which was primarily a “hemp house”. We had about 23 hemp bars and four counterweighted. I understand fully Stephens problem of having a heavy “Frenchman” to fly in and out. I have to admit, though, that we never looked at tying the lines together to keep the level on the in. Unless you braced each line off seperately the weight of the bar is still going to settle at the “tie-off” on the pin. Usually we would have the three lines untangled and fed round the pin straight so that when the weight went back onto it you wouldn’t gain any. If the lines weren’t straight going round the pin then one line would site differently and you’d be slack on one or two line, making the frenchman lean slightly and waft in the breaze of the actors walking past it. If the scenary and scene changes allowed, we would dead the frenchman just off the deck and use weights or stage screws to stretch the line and get it on the deck. But, however, this wasn’t always possible.

As for not having to change the dead on a two or three week run, I’ve never had the good fortune of not having to alter some deads at least once a week. The nature of using hemp on a coastal town made it more interesting, especially when the wet weather came, which it usually did. We did try to get around that problem by changing from natural fibre to synthetic hemp, it did help but the poly stuff was never as good as the natural.

On the subject of tying onto bars and bags, I’ll cover that later if htere’s an interest. I hope you don’t mind me resurrecting this post, I have found everyones comments very interesting.

TTFN
Andy