Tormentors / Teasers

[Liamb]

In my experience Tormentor is a term used to describe black hard masking generically. Portals are hard masking connected to a hard border. Ahhhhh Semantics....

[David Ripley]

AFAIK

 

Tormentor; The most downstage bit of vertical(usually hard)masking as previously said to 'torment' the audience who want to see back stage

 

Teaser; The most downstage bit of horizontal masking (usually soft) to 'tease' the audience about what is to appear next from the flys. A House border is a teaser

 

Portal; A complete set of vertical (legs) and horizontal (header) hard masking to form a frame. Usually in the show's colours/theme. As opposed to making a frame using hard or soft blacks

 

Flipper; any bit of hard masking - often attached to a portal - that can be 'flipped' out of the way as required. For instance a West End show I worked on many moons ago had very deep trucks that moved on and off stage. There was little wing space so a flipper on the portal hid them when off. The SL truck also had a flipper on the top of the DS face which had to dropped down by crew so that it fitted under the Double purchase counterweights when moved offstage. (This was the Aldwych btw) The crew member at the top of the truck operating the flipper was somewhat surprised one night when the truck crashed into the portal leg. This was because a very early colour changer had stuck and the Chief LX had decided to climb out along the portal during the show to fix it. The cast were even more surprised by the volley of abuse that descended from the portal by the Chief as the bits of the portal and truck flew in all directions.

 

Return; Any bit of masking at a different angle to the main masking. On the offstage edge they can run at any angle to mask sightlines. Alternatively on the onstage edge, they probably run up and down stage. Often they are cosmetic to give the portals the appearance of thickness

 

Lots of these terms are disappearing. One of my favourites being 'The Rag' for the House tabs, which I doubt is in use any longer. But then we still use floats, whereas I doubt any theatres are built with a carpet cut anymore

 

David

[david.elsbury]

I still hear "House Rag" occasionally here (and use it myself!) in NZ but I guess like anything it's down to who you're working with and where you are.

 

David

[iains]

I'll bet it was not only the cast who were surprised, it's interesting how inventive you can become in those situations particularly with regard to parentage, ancestry and genealogy

 

iains

[gsarchive]

I've just received a venue tech spec that mentioned tormentors / teaser - not terms I'd ever encountered before. A quick search revealed what they are (now added to the BR wiki) but I'm intrigued as to where those rather wonderful terms came from. Anyone know?

 

 

In my days at Howard & Wyndham Tormentors were placed running up and down stage from behind the iron curtain up to the first Pros/Portal They had an archway in the bottom of them in which the stage manager sat and cued the show. Above their heads wers sloots to enable side lighing to shine through. Up until the 40s these side positions often had arctype spotlights with an operator changing coloue and often following performers. Usually they were also used as a method to illiminate light spill round the edge of the house tabs. In the H&W Theatres there were usually a set of No1 tabs and a border in they same colour for using in front tab scenes. Theatre Royal Newcastle were RED velvet. King's edinburgh were grey laterly becoming black. other theatres in the chain had different colours.