Revolving Stage - Early Western Development

Early Western Development

The very first revolving stage in the western world was build by Karl Lautenschläger (1843–1906) in 1896 in Munich, Germany. Lautenschläger studied under Carl Brandt at the court theatre in Darmstadt from there he went to Munich, where he worked for 22 years and became the head machinist at the Royal theatre. He is known for his revolving stage, sometimes called the Lautenschläger stage, which later acquired the legacy of being called the new Shakespeare stage. The stage was installed at the Residenz Theatre for a performance of Don Giovanni, an opera by Wolfgang Mozart. The revolve at the Residenz Theatre was fifty feet in diameter and was raised slightly off of the regular stage floor. With the proscenium a little less than a fourth of the revolve was visible to the audience. Lautenschläger used electricity to power the turntable, with the table turning on rollers, which run on a circular track. This particular revolve was split into quarter sections and allowed four scenes to be set at the top of the show. The rotating stage allowed for depth, like landscapes with views in the distance and more three-dimensional set in front of the walls of the revolve.

For theatres like the Dresden, that did not have an underside to their stage, each sector of the revolve would have “wo wheels operating directly on the stage floor and propelled by a small motor fixed to the underside of the turntable. Some revolves had only two separate sections while some had as many as seven. Not all sections had to be split into equal proportions. Sections could be very shallow or very deep according to what the scene required. Rectangle sections were even used many times for indoor scenes. Some revolves had sections that connected to each other to give the appearance of travel and help give the set perspective. Eventually traps, elevators and rotating stages combined in some theatres. The individual sections of the turntable could be lowered and raised to and from the underneath the stage to make scene changes even more efficient.

In 1889 the Munich court theatre hired Lautenschläger to design a stage that was more efficient for Shakespeare productions. His rotating stage seemed to be the perfect solution to Shakespeare. Other theatres and other companies performing Shakespeare quickly began to use the rotating stage and it started to become known as the new Shakespeare stage. This was probably the biggest role for the rotating stage in its history.