Technical Design Solutions for Theatre

A Fiber-optic Star Drop

Billy Woods

 

The most commonly used technique to give the illusion of stars is low-wattage lamps, laboriously wired into a fairly bulky sky drop. This article describes a much lighter, more quickly built, and more durable sky drop, which uses fiber-optic filaments in place of both the lamps and the wires that connect them.

While high-grade fiber optics were developed for the communications field, Mitsubishi Rayon Company has developed a grade of less expensive fiber optics especially suited to theatre. Marketed under the trade name of Eskam® in diameters of 0.1 to 3.0 millimeters, this durable plastic filament can be purchased in spools of up to 2.4 kilometers in length.

BUILDING A FIBER-OPTIC STAR DROP

In the earliest ...