Tear-away (vertical seam) curtain?

[Chilimac]

Long time browser, first time poster.

I'm trying to work out a few options for a drop. It will be front-projected video and rear-projected shadow-play, 18'+ tall by 35'-6"wide, with a 8' tall vertical split on center for actor entrances (probably out of muslin, though I'm pushing for Poly-cyc or poly silk, China silk out of budget). At the end of the play, actors need to be able to grab each half of the center split and "tear" the drop the rest of the way up the center, and then the entire drop needs to fall kabuki-style. I've got a pretty good handle on the kabuki rig (going to hang 1.9" #40 pipe on bearings, with dowels 2' OC, rotate pipe to allow drop to slide off dowels): but I would always welcome tips & advice.

I'm posting because of the "tearing" action. I, of course, thought "velcro", but the director doesn't like that (nor does she like magnets or snaps), and 10+ feet of rigged zipper sounds like a SNAFU waiting to happen. Any better ideas on how to rig a semi-translucent drop to tear at seam every night (and re-set after show) for at least 30 shows, on a ~$1000 budget (that can also be easily reset by a single ASM intern)?

 

[MarshallPope]

Really, you may be able to get away with just some vertical bits of 1" gaff every foot or so. I'm thinking that that would probably be discreet and foolproof enough.

What's the show?

 

[Chilimac]

With actors going in and out of the 8' split for 95% of the show before the magic needs to happen, I would not trust gaff tape.

The show is based on the story of Alcestis, but it is a highly stylized, largely derived-work piece (getting any detail in concrete is like trying to nail down jello: the play will be written & re-written during rehearsal).

 

[LavaASU]

Or 2" clear packing tape on the back. Shouldn't have a huge impact on the shadow play, so you could use whatever amount you need in order to make it stick but tear...

 

[FatherMurphy]

The hems for the center split are going to be visible when backlit, probably not a lot of ways to prevent that and still get the number of cycles you want out of the drop.

I'd personally go with velcro, even though the director has already expressed disinterest. You might question him/her a bit closer as to why they don't think velcro is appropriate - you might be able to get it approved after all, depending on what the concern is.

You could sew a number of plastic rings to the backsides of the center split, and either tie the two sides together with light thread (allowing a progressive breaking of the threads), or run a piece of tieline to sew the two sets of rings together, and by pulling the tieline out of the split, release the sides (a lot of balloon drop bags work on this principle).

A more involved method might be to use two zippers - one half of a zipper on either side of the split, with the mating halves each sewn to a strip of fabric with a tear pre-started. Zip the strip in between the sections, pull to finish the tear, and to reset, resew the zipper halves to a new strip and zip back into the curtain.

Simply sewing the two halves of curtain together also comes to mind (don't reverse and finish the seam like usual, just leave the ends loose), since a single stitch line would probably tear easily, and before the main curtain was hurt, but getting it in and out of the sewing machine, and back to the pipe, would be a wrestling match.