Folded drop to reveal additional drops

Ech725

Active Member
I have a 20’ x 40’ piece of fabric that will be hung on a a batten with grommets and tie line. It will be folded into 4 so that there are (4) 10’ x 20’ drops. The plan is to have an actor on each side and pull to reveal a drop. My initial thought was to use Velcro (2-3’ piece) at the tops and center. There will be two reveals or two actor pulls. My concern is that we don’t want the actors to pull and reveal the last panel because the yanking force may reveal the last panel rather than panel 1, 2, and 3. Any tips or has anyone done something similar?
 
What? Can you post a sketch of how you want this to work? so 10' of it is tied to the pipe, and the other 30' is velcroed to itself like a zigzag/accordion? So it opens L to R? what holds it up as the actors pull it open? theres 30' of fabric just dangling there. I'm confused...

Either way, setting it up like a kabuki would be far more effective than velcro, for the reason you mentioned. You might pull everything down on the first yank.
 
What? Can you post a sketch of how you want this to work? so 10' of it is tied to the pipe, and the other 30' is velcroed to itself like a zigzag/accordion? So it opens L to R? what holds it up as the actors pull it open? theres 30' of fabric just dangling there. I'm confused...

Either way, setting it up like a kabuki would be far more effective than velcro, for the reason you mentioned. You might pull everything down on the first yank.

Perhaps the images can clarify.

It will start with image 1, then there will be the first unfold from the top going down to reveal image 2, and followed by another unfold to reveal image 3. There will be lots of extra fabric that will be draped on the floor. It will be dead hung on a pipe.

IMG_1375.JPG IMG_1376.JPG IMG_1377.JPG IMG_1378.JPG
 
If it were me I would explore some way to do a kabuki drop ( the final scene on the batten. Two kabuki drops in front of it ).
 
Ah so only 10' tall. Yeah, cut the fabric into 4 pieces and do a kabuki
 
10' wide and 20' tall. Each panelis 5' tall so image 1 is 10 x 5, image 2 is 10 X 10 (or 10 X 5 with 10 X 5 of blank below), ditto 3, and 4 has 3 top still exposed.

Obviously tie top of full drop to batten, then I think a kabuki release at the 1/4 height points. The velcro might work, just a trick of offsetting from 1/4 fold lines so one can be pulled without force on the others. The tricky one is holding 3rd 5' band from top to top band for image 3 reveal.

Try it.
 
It's in a museum space with no fly and short ceiling. Each image is 10' tall by 20' wide. I can't cut them because the director likes the idea of the whole fabric piece being attached and pulled toward the audience.

The kabuki method got me thinking that I could secure the drop with grommets and ties or image 3. I can do velcro from the second (image 2 will be velcroed to image 3). I can have image 1 independent of image 2 by doing a poor man's kabuki with webbing and velcro. It should work...

Curtain-with-Header.jpg
 
I think you could get away with Velcro just make sure they are layered properly, both on the tied piece. The first panel should be velcroed higher then the 2nd.
Here are my recreations of your images https://imgur.com/a/PSLp67l
The two green lines attach and the 2 purple lines attach. Spacing exaggerated for illustration purposes.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back