Glossary
A
Aladdin
Aladdin, was a musical/pantomime written by Sandy Wilson for the inaugural Christmas Pantomime at the newly refurbished Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith
Auditorium
The building or the portion of the building consisting of: the audience seating area, orchestra pit, lighting and sound booths, stage, wings, dressing rooms, set construction area, greenroom, and rehearsal areas.
AutoCad
AutoCAD is a suite of CAD software products for 2- and 3-dimensional design and drafting, developed and sold by Autodesk, Inc.. The original concept of AutoCAD in the 1980s was to promote customization and feature extensibility, and was what made it especially appealing.
B
Blueprints
Plans drawn to scale, used by builders, plumbing, electrical, and other subcontractors in construction. Blueprints include floor plans, elevations, a site plan, foundation plan and wall sections, plumbing, electrical and mechanical plans, and construction details.
Boxes
Small private rooms built into either the space beside the stage, either between the stage front and the rest of the theatre; or else built behind or to the side of the main blocks of seating, recessed into the wall.
Britannica
Encyclopędia Britannica is a general encyclopedia. Its articles are written by a staff of 19 full-time editors and over four thousand expert contributors, and are targeted at educated adult readers.
C
C.A.D.
Computer Aided Design
Casting
To form (an object) by pouring metal, plaster, etc., in a fluid state into a mould and letting it harden.
Chandelier
A decorative lighting fixture with arms branching out to hold candles and later, gas and electric lights. Chandeliers, which are suspended from the ceiling, date back to Anglo-Saxon times, before 1066 and were found mostly in churches and the homes of a privileged few.
Compound
A substance made by combining two or more parts or elements; water is a chemical compound made from hydrogen and oxygen, for example.
D
Dowel
A round wooden rod of relatively small diameter usually available in sizes ranging from 5mm - 30mm in diameter and 1 and 2 meters in length.
F
Fly
To raise scenery above the floor of the stage by use of ropes, battens, etc.
Footlights
A series of floodlights placed on a stage floor along the front of the stage. Traditional in variety theatres, foots are nowadays rarely used.
G
Gallery
A gallery above the stage floor where technicians add and remove counterweights from the arbors. Usually located so technicians have access to
Grid
A framework of spaced bars that are parallel to or cross each other. A network of lines that cross each other to form a series of squares or rectangles. A network of cables or pipes for distributing power, especially high-voltage electric
I
Illustrator
Adobe vector based illustration software, commonly used when creating logos and other graphically based images.
L
Linesets
The ropes that a rigger pulls to make scenery rise and fall. These are attached to pullies and weights to make the job easier.
M
Mould
A container into which liquid is poured to create a given shape when it hardens
Mouldings
Ornamental trimmings added to flat surfaces, cornices and columns.
Musical
Genre of twentieth-century musical theatre, especially popular in Great Britain and the USA. Characterized by spoken dialogue, dramatic plot interspersed with songs, ensemble numbers, and dancing.
P
Pantomime
Pantomime (informally, panto) refers to a theatrical genre, traditionally found in Great Britain, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and Ireland, which is usually performed around the Christmas and New Year holiday season.
Photoshop
A professional image-editing and graphics creation software from Adobe. It provides a large library of effects, filters and layers.
Pit
A depressed area between the stage and audience seating area where musicians sit, so the audience can hear the music and see the performance over the heads of the musicians.
Portico
A monumental projecting porch with a roof supported by columns. They were most commonly found at the front entrance of an important building or structure.
Proscenium
A proscenium is an arch in a theatre which separates the stage from the audience.
R
Rake
Many stage floors, usually in theatres built for dance or variety, are higher at the back than at the front, to give the audience a better view. These stages are said to be "raked", and the "rake" is the angle of slope from back to front.
Riggers
Historically, a rigger was a person who worked with ropes for hoisting the sails of a ship. Today, a rigger is a person or company which specializes in the lifting and or moving of extremely large and/or heavy objects using ropes, wires or electical devices
Rigging
A lighting term. To set the lanterns in position utilising Ropes or Wires. As a noun, its refers to the entirety of the lanterns on show.
Romanesque
A style of European architecture prevalent from the ninth to the twelfth centuries, with round arches and barrel vaults influenced by Roman architecture and characterized by heavy stone construction
S
Scale
The concept of scale is applicable if a system is represented proportionally by another system. For example, for a scale model of an object, the ratio of corresponding lengths is a dimensionless scale, e.g. 1:25; this scale is larger than 1:50.
Scanner
This device allows you to read images and text into your computer. Scanners use a variety of connection formats including Parallel Port, USB, and SCSI. USB is simple, SCSI is fast, and Parallel Port is extremely slow.
Scenery
The backdrops, furniture, and other visual accessories that help define the locale and mood of a play
Silicone
A rubber made from silicone elastomers and noted for its retention of flexibility, resilience, tensile strength and wide temperature range
Stage
The portion of an auditorium or room that has been structured into a formal area for productions or presentations.
T
Tabs
Tabs or House tabs are the main curtains used to separate the stage from the auditorium in a proscenium theatre
Trap
An opening through the stage floor, ie: grave trap (lowered rectangular section) star trap (where actor is raised on a lift from below stage)
V
Vector
A map data structure using the point or node and the connecting segment as the basic building block for representing geographic features.
W
Weights
Counter Weight System. Uses weights to ease the lowering and rising of fly
Wings
The sides of the stage concealed from the audiences' view. Left and right offstage areas; also, narrow standing pieces of scenery, or "legs," more or less parallel to the proscenium, which form the sides of a setting.
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