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Laura Woodward, Andy Paterson, Sal Cacciato and Brian Lee Huynh in Triad Stage’s The 39 Steps, with the working curtain gag.
Hannay is feeling a little tense. There’s a woman in danger, and two thugs lurking outside. In order to get some privacy, he pulls a window blind down. It rolls back up. He yanks it down again, but it rolls up again. He lowers it slowly, and this time it stays down. As he walks away, it suddenly snaps back up again. This is one of the many gags in 39 Steps, a humorous homage to Hitchcock films. When Triad Stage produced the show in the fall of 2014 it fell to me to make this gag work.
A self-contained unit containing vise grips, solenoid, remote control receiver and battery pack was activated by a remote control to release the curtain.
Other props masters who have previously done this show have solved the problem with solenoids. If you disengage the brake on the blinds, they will always snap back up after they are pulled down. The third time the actor pulls them down, he slips the ring on the end of the string to a pin which sticks out of the window frame; this holds the blinds in the down position. The solenoid pulls the pin into the frame, releasing the string and sending the blinds back up into their roll.
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The vice grip/remote unit in the back of the window unit.
Rather than trying to make the solenoid do all the work, I needed the solenoid to trigger something else. A pair of vise grips provided inspiration. The jaws stay closed, but because of the spring in the handle, a little squeeze can pop them open. I opened the jaws slightly, so a string could slip through, but a washer tied to the string could not. The jaws were perpendicular to the string, so you can pull up on the string as hard as possible, and they would not open. But a little sideways tug on the handle would open them with no problem.
The vice grips held a washer when closed, and released when a solenoid pulled their handle.