Are you tired of building and tearing down a stage at every new location? Are you dismayed by the awful damage to materials and fragile fixtures? And are you weary of assembling and disassembling doorways? Then consider the advantages of a stage on wheels.
Our airatorium is sixty feet wide, so we used a forty-foot trailer, the longest permitted by law, as the floor for our stage. Beneath this floor there was room for ten fourfoot-wide compartments, with individual doors eighteen inches high and four feet deep. In these are carried all the small items, as well as all the pipes, pegs, fence posts, and tools. These compartment doors may be opened without disturbing the rest of the load, a tremendous advantage.
Beneath the compartments a simple rack provides riding space for the power pole, which is always the first item to be unloaded.
From the floor up, the stage was built to look like any moving van, except that the front side is completely open, and has an eight-inch header, as shown. Two posts, set far enough in from the front to be concealed by the wing curtains, support cantilevers which in turn support the header and prevent the front of the roof from sagging.
A built-in black-light device is concealed the center curtains, and screen and blackboards are behind the wing curtains. The wing curtains are mounted on boards so they can be easily removed and hung at the back of the stage for moving.
The electrical control panel is permanently mounted on the rear wall, and lines run from it to the lights. In transit, the lines are coiled back to the panel and hung on the wall beside it without being disconnected.
While moving, the open front is closed by the two large signs from the front entrance.
A second van, parked to the rear, contains blowers and furnaces, and storage shelves for books, sermons, et cetera.
The saving in labor is enormous. Twenty-five men put this up, ready for a meeting, in eight hours, including tent, chairs, and all. It is taken down and made ready for the road by the same size crew in four hours.
The accompanying pictures show the process of loading. First, long poles and boards go along the back wall, beneath the black-light device. Then the doorways are loaded as units by a fork lift, after which the fabric, chairs, et cetera, on their respective pallets, are placed within the doorways. Finally the large signs are used to close the open side and we are ready to move.
We strongly recommend this as a great saver of the evangelist's strength, and the conference equipment, which suffers much damage from ordinary packing and hauling.