Design Degree for side light on lighting ladder

36º. Just kidding... need more info. how big is the stage, how high is the ladder, how many zones are you breaking it up into?

You can figure it out for yourself by making a scale drawing of the theatre in elevation view (front view, how the audience sees it). Then overlay various barrel angles (19, 26, 36, 50º) and see what will give you the best coverage. I go through this process in Vectorworks for each show, it's called worksheeting. Often you end up with something like a near, a mid, and far shot that might be a 50, a 36, and a 26, respectively. Depends on the theatre, the show, and the scenery.
 
Are these being used with booms or is the bottom of the ladder the lowest side light?
 
How far offstage of centerline are the ladders?
How wide is the masked opening (how far from CL is the onstage edge of the legs)?

Knowing this, arbitrarily decide how wide (US-DS) you want the pool to be, and multiply the throw distance by the multiplication factor of each fixture to see which comes closest.
Diameter of pool = Throw Distance * M.F.
50° = 0.93
36° = 0.65
26° = 0.46
19° = 0.31

(You're probably correct: 26° works in most cases.)
 
We use S4 36 and 26 deg. ellipsoidals as ladder side lighting. They are about 7 ft. offstage and light a 38 ft. wide stage, 26 deg. as far shot, 36 deg. as short. Typical trim heights is +10/+12/+14 ft.. We also have 7 ft. high side towers using S4 36 deg. units. Same distance offstage. Attached plot shows configuration.

We've used this or a similar setup (Shakespeare 30/40 deg. units, or 6x9/6x12 units) for decades. We own 50 deg. barrels for some u it's, nobodies ever asked for them.
 

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