USITT Day 2

First, I apologize for the multiple postings. The hotels wireless network, and my laptop didn’t play nicely together. Hence, I am now posting the remaining posts.


The Expo opened today, and the floor was hoping. Lots of good books have come out, that are being offered – Heads and Tales by Bill Sapsis, the new version of John Huntington’s Show control book. They have the new automation book, as well as the normal offerings.

Integrating Show Control into your system was the first session I went to today, presented by John Huntington. It was a good session. I thought the session was very though and well presented. One of the things he said a couple times, and true in many more ways than just show control was if you can’t afford to do it right / safely, then you can’t afford to do it at all. He had a bit on value engineering that I thought was interesting. It is true that after deductions, somehow most designers still assume they get the fully functionality and ease of operation after cuts. I have never been quite sure how they that occurs, but I have been a victim of it – I’ll admit. At any rate, I enjoyed the session.

Next was the Physics of Rigging, presented by Eric C Martell and Verda Beth Martell. It too was very well presented. They started with a simple situation (a bowling ball hung from a cable / rope and showed the forces mathematically. They also demonstrated this with load cells. They moved on to moving forces, then multiple points and bridles. For more information about the information they presented you can check go here: http://www2.kcpa.uiuc.edu/kcpatd/physics/index.htm

I ended the sessions today with the Technical Production Commission reception. It’s always great to put faces to names – people on the stagecraft list, people who design this or that from the tech expo and such. It’s also interesting see all of the commissions and a bit of the inner workings of USITT. It’s an avenue that I would like to get more involved in, myself.