June 20, 2002
Why the net is beautiful
Tom and I had an email exchange about the Robert H. Frank article in my previous post. He understandably doubted that Iowa had at one time been a bastion of opera and questioned the "1,200 opera houses" number. I thought I'd try to emulate Woody Allen from the scene in Annie Hall in which he has an argument about Marshall McLuhan with a stranger in a movie queue. "I happen to have Marshall McLuhan right here", he says, and Mr. McLuhan steps from behind the movie placard. So I emailed Dr. Frank about it. He was kind enough to reply with substantiation and qualification of the citation (below).
Tom still reasonably questions the result and notes the variance in usage of "opera house", but the whole of it was a defining 'net experience of wide connectivity. Thanks to everyone involved.
Robert Frank's email follows:
Dear Steve Yost,
Below I've
pasted in the transcript of the NPR segment on which I first heard the
opera house figure. I couldn't believe my ears when I first heard
the segment so I tracked down the producer of it and he confirmed that
the number was indeed correct, but that it referred not to classical
opera houses but to live concert halls, just as you suspected.
Still, a hefty number. Savor your McLuhan moment.
All best,
Bob Frank
Copyright 1995 National Public Radio
NPR
SHOW: Morning Edition (NPR 6:00 am ET)
September 12, 1995
Transcript # 1692-15
TYPE: Package
SECTION: News; Domestic
LENGTH: 1149 words
HEADLINE: Historic Theater Sound Makers Found in Old Opera House
GUESTS: TONY RIVENBARG, Hall Manager; JOAN DILLON, League of Historic American
Theaters;
HIGHLIGHT:
Aileen LeBlanc of WHQR reports on a rare, 19th Century speical effects tool
used in the theater. Called a thunder roll, the device was used to simulate
thunder in the absence of modern electronic devices.
BODY:
BOB EDWARDS, Host: Theater audiences love special effects, and producers try
to indulge them. Even during the 19th Century, theater technicians were quite
adept at enhancing the action on stage. One of their tools was called a thunder
run or thunder roll. It was a long wooden trough through which stagehands
rolled cannonballs to mimic the sound of a thunderstorm. Historians believe
that only one thunder run is left in this country. It's in Wilmington, North
Carolina, and Aileen LeBlance of member station WHQR took a tour.
AILEEN LeBLANC, Reporter: Wilmington's Thalian [sp] Hall was built in the
mid-1800s. Like many theaters of the time, it was the pride of the city, and
like many theaters, Thalian Hall had its own special effects devices. The
hall's manager, Tony Rivenbarg [sp], explains that typically 19th Century
theaters were equipped with trap doors and elevators, turntables and treadmills,
rain machines and thunder runs.
TONY RIVENBARG, Hall Manager: It's just a different kind of medium. Today we
can use a tape recorder, but in that day they were able to create the sound of a
thunderstorm with wood and metal and rope and possibly even canvas. And in
those days when audiences did not have the access to media that we do today,
that was pretty special to go inside a building and hear a thunderstorm at will.
AILEEN LeBLANC: Most theaters built in the 19th Century have disappeared,
victims of fire or urban renewal. If the theater did survive, chances are the
effects devices did not. The area they took up was often converted to storage
space. Joan Dillon [sp], a board member of the League of Historic American
Theaters, is completing a book on 19th Century theaters and has found that
Thalian Hall's thunder run is probably the only one left.
JOAN DILLON, League of Historic American Theaters: The only other one that I've
ever known about was at Nelsonville, Ohio, and it burned about five or six years
ago.
AILEEN LeBLANC: Nineteenth Century theaters were called operahouses, though very
few operas were ever staged. Dillon says the opera houses were as common then
as movie houses are today.
JOAN DILLON: At one time, to give you a statistic on opera houses, and a lot
of these are very small, but Iowa, at the turn of the century, had 1,300
opera houses in the state of Iowa. Kansas City I know had 13 legitimate
theaters at the turn of the century and now has one left. And probably
equipment like this would have been in maybe several of then, and then you could
multiply that around the country.
AILEEN LeBLANC: Thalian Hall's thunder run is hidden high above the ceiling of
the theater right over the orchestra pit about 70 feet above the stage floor.
Getting there is not easy. A series of stairs leads to a tiny room filled with
boxes of dusty archived programs and such. A narrow, old wooden slat door opens
to a dark stairway which he climbed to the even darker attic. You straddle a
beam and crouch through a small tunnel. A light is clamped near a brick wall
ahead. Tony Rivenbarg leads the way.
TONY RIVENBARG: We are on a gangway in a sense it is over the thunder roll which
runs the entire width of the building twice.
AILEEN LeBLANC: The wooden trough of the thunder run starts high on one side of
the theater and slopes all the way to the other side of the building. There's a
slight drop. Then a second trough runs diagonally back across the building.
TONY RIVENBARG: And then there is a wooden contraption which would allow you to
load a cannonball, and then you would pull a rope which would be attached to a
pulley - you pull a rope and then it would release that cannonball. And then as
it came back into place would load another one. Then the first cannonball
would start rolling down the trough making a rumbling sound as if it was a
distant thunderstorm moving towards you.
AILEEN LeBLANC: Subsequent cannonballs would increase the sound and the storm
and the storm would seem to be getting closer until it was in full force
overhead. Pieces of the release mechanism are missing, so stagehands drop a few
21-pound cannonballs into the trough for a demonstration.
AILEEN LeBLANC: The sound reverberated in the attic and was amplified naturally
by the huge cavernous space. It rumbled down through the open area over the
stage and out into the audience. But, in the 1950s during one of the theater's
renovations, a firewall was built that cut off the sound path. After many idle
decades, the thunder run was shaken out of mothballs in 1983 for the 125th
anniversary of the theater and was last heard by audiences at a gala in 1990.
For both of those events, sound designer Paul Johnson [sp] gave the 150-year-old
sound effect device some modern electronic help.
PAUL JOHNSON, Sound Designer: If you operate it without any type of
amplification, from the seating area it sounds like maybe there's a couple of
people fighting up in the attic or something. So I did some contact pickups
on it and amplified it, and then to try to re-create the original soundpath, I
flew huge speakers aimed down to the stage so that it would simulate the
original path. Now whether it sounded like it originally did or not, I guess no
one is left alive to tell me, but it certainly sounded very much like thunder.
[sound of amplified thunder run]
AILEEN LeBLANC: In the center of the empty house, you can get an idea of what it
must have been like to attend a performance of The Tempest a hundred years ago.
[sound of amplified thunder run]
AILEEN LeBLANC: Paul Johnson has started fund-raising efforts to fully restore
the thunder run, and Thalian Hall theater manager Tony Rivenbarg hopes audiences
in the next century will get a chance to hear a real old-fashioned thunderstorm.
TONY RIVENBARG: There's something imminently theatrical about the 19th Century
that the 20th Century continues to try to imitate, but there's still something
special about turning the crank on a phonograph or a music box opening up and
the tune coming through. Yes, you can record and listen to a tape, but it is
not the same thing. It is a physical vibration by the presence being there. We
certainly are not going to get rid of all the technological advances we've
made to the building, but at the same time, we're not going to throw out what
makes it terribly terribly unique and special. I think the combination of the
two is what is exciting.
AILEEN LeBLANC: For National Public Radio, I'm Aileen LeBlanc in Wilmington,
North Carolina.
The preceding text has been professionally transcribed. However, although
the text has been checked against an audio track, in order to meet rigid
distribution and transmission deadlines, it may not have been proofread against
tape.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: September 13, 1995
June 20, 2002 12:14 PM
Tom and I had an email exchange about the Robert H. Frank article in my previous post. He understandably doubted that Iowa had at one time been a bastion of opera and questioned the "1,200 opera houses" number. I thought I'd try to emulate Woody Allen from the scene in Annie Hall in which he has an argument about Marshall McLuhan with a stranger in a movie queue. "I happen to have Marshall McLuhan right here", he says, and Mr. McLuhan steps from behind the movie placard. So I emailed Dr. Frank about it. He was kind enough to reply with substantiation and qualification of the citation (below).
Tom still reasonably questions the result and notes the variance in usage of "opera house", but the whole of it was a defining 'net experience of wide connectivity. Thanks to everyone involved.
Robert Frank's email follows:
Dear Steve Yost,
All best,
Bob Frank
Copyright 1995 National Public Radio
NPR
SHOW: Morning Edition (NPR 6:00 am ET)
September 12, 1995
Transcript # 1692-15
TYPE: Package
SECTION: News; Domestic
LENGTH: 1149 words
HEADLINE: Historic Theater Sound Makers Found in Old Opera House
GUESTS: TONY RIVENBARG, Hall Manager; JOAN DILLON, League of Historic American
Theaters;
HIGHLIGHT:
Aileen LeBlanc of WHQR reports on a rare, 19th Century speical effects tool
used in the theater. Called a thunder roll, the device was used to simulate
thunder in the absence of modern electronic devices.
BODY:
BOB EDWARDS, Host: Theater audiences love special effects, and producers try
to indulge them. Even during the 19th Century, theater technicians were quite
adept at enhancing the action on stage. One of their tools was called a thunder
run or thunder roll. It was a long wooden trough through which stagehands
rolled cannonballs to mimic the sound of a thunderstorm. Historians believe
that only one thunder run is left in this country. It's in Wilmington, North
Carolina, and Aileen LeBlance of member station WHQR took a tour.
AILEEN LeBLANC, Reporter: Wilmington's Thalian [sp] Hall was built in the
mid-1800s. Like many theaters of the time, it was the pride of the city, and
like many theaters, Thalian Hall had its own special effects devices. The
hall's manager, Tony Rivenbarg [sp], explains that typically 19th Century
theaters were equipped with trap doors and elevators, turntables and treadmills,
rain machines and thunder runs.
TONY RIVENBARG, Hall Manager: It's just a different kind of medium. Today we
can use a tape recorder, but in that day they were able to create the sound of a
thunderstorm with wood and metal and rope and possibly even canvas. And in
those days when audiences did not have the access to media that we do today,
that was pretty special to go inside a building and hear a thunderstorm at will.
AILEEN LeBLANC: Most theaters built in the 19th Century have disappeared,
victims of fire or urban renewal. If the theater did survive, chances are the
effects devices did not. The area they took up was often converted to storage
space. Joan Dillon [sp], a board member of the League of Historic American
Theaters, is completing a book on 19th Century theaters and has found that
Thalian Hall's thunder run is probably the only one left.
JOAN DILLON, League of Historic American Theaters: The only other one that I've
ever known about was at Nelsonville, Ohio, and it burned about five or six years
ago.
AILEEN LeBLANC: Nineteenth Century theaters were called operahouses, though very
few operas were ever staged. Dillon says the opera houses were as common then
as movie houses are today.
JOAN DILLON: At one time, to give you a statistic on opera houses, and a lot
of these are very small, but Iowa, at the turn of the century, had 1,300
opera houses in the state of Iowa. Kansas City I know had 13 legitimate
theaters at the turn of the century and now has one left. And probably
equipment like this would have been in maybe several of then, and then you could
multiply that around the country.
AILEEN LeBLANC: Thalian Hall's thunder run is hidden high above the ceiling of
the theater right over the orchestra pit about 70 feet above the stage floor.
Getting there is not easy. A series of stairs leads to a tiny room filled with
boxes of dusty archived programs and such. A narrow, old wooden slat door opens
to a dark stairway which he climbed to the even darker attic. You straddle a
beam and crouch through a small tunnel. A light is clamped near a brick wall
ahead. Tony Rivenbarg leads the way.
TONY RIVENBARG: We are on a gangway in a sense it is over the thunder roll which
runs the entire width of the building twice.
AILEEN LeBLANC: The wooden trough of the thunder run starts high on one side of
the theater and slopes all the way to the other side of the building. There's a
slight drop. Then a second trough runs diagonally back across the building.
TONY RIVENBARG: And then there is a wooden contraption which would allow you to
load a cannonball, and then you would pull a rope which would be attached to a
pulley - you pull a rope and then it would release that cannonball. And then as
it came back into place would load another one. Then the first cannonball
would start rolling down the trough making a rumbling sound as if it was a
distant thunderstorm moving towards you.
AILEEN LeBLANC: Subsequent cannonballs would increase the sound and the storm
and the storm would seem to be getting closer until it was in full force
overhead. Pieces of the release mechanism are missing, so stagehands drop a few
21-pound cannonballs into the trough for a demonstration.
AILEEN LeBLANC: The sound reverberated in the attic and was amplified naturally
by the huge cavernous space. It rumbled down through the open area over the
stage and out into the audience. But, in the 1950s during one of the theater's
renovations, a firewall was built that cut off the sound path. After many idle
decades, the thunder run was shaken out of mothballs in 1983 for the 125th
anniversary of the theater and was last heard by audiences at a gala in 1990.
For both of those events, sound designer Paul Johnson [sp] gave the 150-year-old
sound effect device some modern electronic help.
PAUL JOHNSON, Sound Designer: If you operate it without any type of
amplification, from the seating area it sounds like maybe there's a couple of
people fighting up in the attic or something. So I did some contact pickups
on it and amplified it, and then to try to re-create the original soundpath, I
flew huge speakers aimed down to the stage so that it would simulate the
original path. Now whether it sounded like it originally did or not, I guess no
one is left alive to tell me, but it certainly sounded very much like thunder.
[sound of amplified thunder run]
AILEEN LeBLANC: In the center of the empty house, you can get an idea of what it
must have been like to attend a performance of The Tempest a hundred years ago.
[sound of amplified thunder run]
AILEEN LeBLANC: Paul Johnson has started fund-raising efforts to fully restore
the thunder run, and Thalian Hall theater manager Tony Rivenbarg hopes audiences
in the next century will get a chance to hear a real old-fashioned thunderstorm.
TONY RIVENBARG: There's something imminently theatrical about the 19th Century
that the 20th Century continues to try to imitate, but there's still something
special about turning the crank on a phonograph or a music box opening up and
the tune coming through. Yes, you can record and listen to a tape, but it is
not the same thing. It is a physical vibration by the presence being there. We
certainly are not going to get rid of all the technological advances we've
made to the building, but at the same time, we're not going to throw out what
makes it terribly terribly unique and special. I think the combination of the
two is what is exciting.
AILEEN LeBLANC: For National Public Radio, I'm Aileen LeBlanc in Wilmington,
North Carolina.
The preceding text has been professionally transcribed. However, although
the text has been checked against an audio track, in order to meet rigid
distribution and transmission deadlines, it may not have been proofread against
tape.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: September 13, 1995
June 20, 2002 12:14 PM