I like how these guys think with magnets. UPDATED!

I caught this thread from one of the newsgroups I follow about tech theatre, & the latest responses are pretty good thinking.

It all started with this question:

Hi all,
I'm going to be starting work on a community theater musical production in a couple months. One of the things the director has been asking for is a set of stairs in which each individual step lights up as an actor walks up & down. I could easily handle wiring in some lights under plexiglass steps and doing a regular chase. How would you suggest designing steps that will light as they're stepped on instead of a regular chase? Having push-buttons that the plexiglass steps rest on is my first thought but I wonder just how safe/reliable such a system wouldbe...

After many serious responses, it finally went downhill to this:

=You might be able to use a proximity sensor of some sort...
=Shoot a burglar beam across the stair just above each tread...
=Cue the lights with the director and choroegrapher and make the dancers hit their marks on time.

By putting large electro magnets in the steps and huge neodymium magnets in the actors shoes, you could make them walk up the steps automatically on cue. By pulsing the magnets you could also make them tap dance in a forceful and exaggerated manner at speeds approaching 60Hz.

== 2 of 5 ==
= huge neodymium magnets
Overkill, surely. Ferrite clogs ought to be ok. :)

== 3 of 5 ==
Hey, great! I'll mention this to the director so that he knows he doesn't have to hire actors who actually know how to dance! ;-)

== 4 of 5 ==
Bear in mind that actors fitted with magnetic boots aren't just limited to stair dancing. With coils laid into the stage you can create high speed linear motion thespians. We can slide an actor from one side of a 50' stage to the other in about half a second.

For audience interaction you can also levitate the actors by passing highly bodacious currents through the existing deaf loop system. It's best to remove all the old ladies hearing aids first though, since they tend to make loud parping noises and fly out their ears with a pop when you energise the loop.

== 5 of 5 ==
I just like to play safe. I've also found that ferrite clogs don't quite have the same crisp response at the higher frequencies that neodymium winkle pickers offer.

4/20/05 - - AND AN UPDATE:
I REALY liked this one:

Not to mention, you can pull the actor to his/her mark and keep them there when speaking. This would be very useful for the actors I know who manage to stand half in and half out of their specials when delivering the most important speech in the play. For the actors who still insist on being in the dark by leaning out of their light even though their feet are properly fixed in place, they could be levitated to grid height, inverted by switching the field to the grid, and then dropped on their head by turning the field off. Could Davie come and do the install for us? Our insurance would probably cover any unanticipated sequelae (explosions, fires, toxic fume emissions, thermonuclear incidents etc.) of his work :-)