ABSTRACT
Overview Stage wagons, which are used to allow rapid and easy transport of scenery across the stage floor, date as far back as the ancient Greek eccyclema, a wagon described only briefly in some ancient texts. Roughly 100 years ago, German opera houses adopted wagons, as they had the turntable, for grand scale scene changes, and to this day huge full stage wagons are seen as essential for any proper opera house. At the Opera Bastille in Paris, a full stage wagon can be assembled from nine individual wagons that can all be coupled together in a 3 × 3 array. Each of these wagons is 6.5 m (21.3′) square, so if a particular set design requires it, the group of nine wagons forms a single mobile platform 19.5 m (64′) square!1 In the theatres with these types of wagons, large sidestage and upstage areas are needed to accommodate them as they shift around. For example, at the end of an act, the full set that is onstage might roll stage right to its storage position, while soon afterwards the complete set for the next act, already set up prior to the start of the show, rolls in from stage left to its place onstage. A third act set awaits its turn on the upstage center wagon. These wagons, acting in concert with equally elaborate lift and fly machinery, enable relatively fast blackout transformations, or visually stunning effects if viewed a vista. For use in the temporary setups being discussed here, the effects can be the same, the scale is usually just much smaller.
