Profiles in IT: Fritz Schwentker
by Belinda Acosta
--Posted January 17, 2002--

Fritz Schwentker, a professor in the University of Texas Department of Theater and Dance, develops automated systems for running scenic effects. This groundbreaking work is done in association with several regional theaters and will ultimately create technology that is affordable and accessible to small and mid-size theaters.

Last month, Professor Schwentker sat down to discuss his research with IT@UT, as eight-month-old daughter Fritzie sat on his lap.

Tell me a little about your background and what you do.
By training and by profession, I am a theater technical director and also a production manager. Technical directors have to know a little bit of everything. A technical director is akin to the general contractor and the consulting engineer on a theater project. We design the backside of the scenery to make sure it stands up. If it has to move, we do the mechanical parts behind that, and then all the organization that's required to get it built: finding materials, hiring the scenic carpentry staff. The people good at this job tend to be technically curious; they're the people looking underneath something to see how it's put together. As a production manager, we oversee the production heads of the production: the scenery, costumes, the lights, etc. That's also what I teach here at UT.

Do you actually work on shows here on campus or just oversee students working on shows?
At UT, I oversee students working on shows. I also work on shows outside UT at different theaters from time to time.

I understand you're doing some interesting things blending technology with behind the scenes technical needs. Can you describe your work?
The research I do, and most of the production work I've done, is to use PCs to control automated stage equipment and effects, particularly those things that are run with electric motors on stage: big things like wagons rolling across stage, turntables turning, things flying in and out.

I use software, hardware and various pieces of electronic equipment primarily meant for the process control industry. Most of that equipment is now relatively inexpensive, as off the shelf components. Everything is pretty 'smart,' with microchips; they're all networkable. That allows people doing theater production perform effects that previously would have been either too expensive or complicated to put together. The engineering is somewhat simplified by the fact that there is a broad range of equipment that can be put in, plugged in and ready to run. I've been using National Instruments LabView and their motion control hardware to write HMIs, control panels for running stage effects.

Stage lighting has been computerized for over 30 years now. You save the set-up of lights in a queue, and the operator hits a 'Go' button and it executes one light cue after the next. But there isn't anything commercially available that's theater specific to support my end of production.

So, I've used the PC and its programming environment to develop a variety of ways to control scenery. We can actually save cues. We may have four or five different axis of motion, and we can synchronize those and get absolute position control, which is very important. You need to know where something is coming from, where it's going, and how fast so that you don't run people over on stage.

Does this technology allow theaters to save on manpower, too?
That's a big part of it as well. You can move (set pieces or scenery) in a variety of ways. You can have a bunch of people back stage in black clothing pushing. But if something is big, or needs to move fast or slowly, then you need to put an electric motor or a hydraulic piston on it-- in which case, the question becomes, how do you control it?

For many years, you would put a switch on stage: for instance, a wagon rolls on stage, and when it hits the switch it decelerates to a stop. And that's fine, as long as three people don't happen to get on just as it's about to stop and it doesn't move far enough. In the technical rehearsal process, you end up having someone stop and move that switch physically. With computer controlled equipment you put a counter on the electric motor, and the computer keeps track of where the piece is at any given time, and whether it's moving at the right speed.

You still have a human being paying attention with a big red mushroom 'STOP' button somewhere on the system, but it makes it easier to synchronize (scenery movement)...(especially) if two or more things are moving simultaneously. It's pretty cool and a lot of fun.

Has your new technology been used here at UT?
I've done some of this work in productions in the College of Fine Arts, although most of it I've done in regional theaters around the country.

What sort of reaction are you getting? Are you finding that your work is a viable, useful technology?
Yes, (the theaters) are very excited about it. Although what I'm doing isn't exactly new to the entertainment industry. If you go to Broadway or Las Vegas, this stuff exists. The large scenic and theatrical companies have built all of it in proprietary format. Those companies essentially rent their technology to the production.

The regional theaters I work with-they need to do these same sort of effects, but tend to have less money to spend. The technical directors are very busy, working from show to show to show. In a commercial project, people get together for one project and then they disband. But a producing theater may do seven or more productions in a season and the technical staff is working flat out, just to deal with the physical aspects of it.

The people who do this job don't have the time to learn technology. I'm at a university, and that's exactly what we're supposed to do--develop new knowledge. I've been having a great time working with those people. I go and do master classes for the staff so they can learn as well.

How long have you been developing this technology?
I've been working on this for five or six years. I started out pretty much from scratch. I had some facility with some of the equipment but not with the computerized control. I'm not a programmer. I've learned that as I've been working.

One of the reasons I've used the development environment I've used is that it's very accessible to me as a technician. It's set up to do exactly what I'm doing in theater: instrumentation, process control and factory automation. It's just been in the last two years that I've had something I can take to the various theater companies and install in their production system. They've been great because they want to use it and they're more than willing to be testers and offer feedback.

(Chicago's) Steppenwolf Theater and I just received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to install a system for them. We're hiring a technician who I can train to use this equipment. We'll be developing a system that's big enough to do eight different simultaneous motions.

The other cool thing is that I've learned about interface design. I look at commercial computer applications and I think, 'That works, this doesn't. Now I need to think the same way about my work as well.' That can be hard, when you spend all day staring at it, getting the same error message. You lose the distance you need. That's why it's been great working with back stage people in other theaters because they say things like, 'It would be really great, Fritz, if I could do da-da-da.' And I can say, 'Oh, I can do that for you!'

So I suppose, if it hasn't happened already, you can synchronize all that stage action with the light board. Yes. There's actually a whole realm of entertainment technology that's called Show Control. This would be one subset of that. Lighting control is one part, the automated moving scenery is another. Pyrotechnics or sound and audio might be yet another. Show Control would act as a 'master' system to the various other systems which are 'slaves.'

Perhaps some people don't understand how important timing is in the theater production, especially with scene shifts? A friend of mine always says it this way: with automated lighting, if the computer or somebody makes a mistake, and a light goes wrong, it's like someone shining a flashlight in your eyes. If one of my things goes awry, it's like someone hitting you with the flashlight. The level of control I must have over the number of interlocks and things is very different than what you need with lighting equipment.

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