Stage City

You’ve seen it in hallways outside of school cafeterias. You’ve seen it near elevators at city hall. Now, you’ve seen it on stage. The water cooler. Sometimes they work great, providing a steady stream of cool water. Other times, you discover a trickle. This one I put on stage for a recent production was somewhere in between, not too weak, not very strong, just adequate. Exactly what you might find in the jury room down at the court house.

The water bubbler nestled in it’s cabinet.

Usually, you cannot run plumbing out to a location on stage, unless you have platforms, and enough height, a short distance, and a sink somewhere nearby. Facilities managers usually frown upon you drilling several holes in their stage deck just to run a couple of pipes or even tubes. In my case, the process was made somewhat more challenging because the bubbler was right on stage, and floor level, in a theatre-in-the-round scenario. I could not run pipes to the unit, it would be too much of a trip hazard, and the nearest faucet and drain was two rooms away. I was able to run an electric cable to the unit, protected by one of those rubber wire protectors you often see running between cubicals in offices.

With the help of a fountain pump, a coffee can (make that plastic), and ice tea jug, a PVC elbow, and a short piece of plastic and some cable clamps, I assembled the portable water bubble unit. The pictures show everything. The reservoir was the coffee container, it fit the pump, which was the submersible type. About eight inches of tubing connected the pump to the bubbler intake, secured with cable clamps on each end.

The reservoir with pump, and the drainage receptacle.

This bubbler unit has a coil of copper tubing that is cooled by a compressor. I didn’t use the compressor, didn’t want the noise on stage, but I had to deal with the coil. The pump has to push water through it, and although the pump we had was decent, it still struggled with the additional distance, especially because of the screen filter at the nozzle. Removing the screen reduced the friction just enough to make an adequate arc of water.

The bubbler drained into an ice tea jug that had the top cut off. A PVC elbow was attached, loosely, to the bubbler, which allowed it to be gently turned to clear way to remove the jug to be emptied. A smaller (shorter) drainage receptacle could have been used, since all the water in the reservoir was not expected to be received. Presumably, some of it would have been consumed by actors.

A cabinet was built to nestle the bubbler, provide counter space, and hide the pump and tanks. The pump’s electrical cord was run to the floor inside the cabinet, then out the bottom, into the rubber protection mat, and over to the DMX controlled relay. The whole assembly, cabinet and bubbler, could be unplugged and moved off to the side, since the space was shared and had to be cleared at time for other users.

Another view of the secret workings.

Accommodations for the stage manager were made to allow for easy servicing (filling and emptying) . The back top portion of the cabinet (the clipboard is on it in the picture) flips up for easy access.

A pitcher or bottled water jug can be use to fill the reservoir each night. Consider a lemon wedge or two, the actors might appreciate it.

The pump, when powered up, did not make much noise, just a slight hum, and was quieter than an overhead fan. The unit was on a control circuit so it could be powered on and off as needed, but because it was so quiet, you even forgot it was on.

As I mentioned, this was used in a theatre-in-the-round setting, where the stage, cast and audience all shred the same floor. It was reported to me that the unit was so convincing, that audience members drank from it during intermission, and after the show, before it got powered down. Oops!