Theater on Scadrial

[NewbSombrero]

A week or so ago, I was talking to one of my Theater major friends, and she mentioned a paper she was writing about rioting in theaters for her Theater History class. I heard it as Rioting and got to thinking about the possible uses of Allomancy and or Feruchemy on the stage. Metal strategically placed around the stage could help Coinshots and Lurchers do various stunts. Rioters and Soothers could be stationed throughout the audience to help tug their emotions in the desired direction to enhance the experience. Archivists would get an obvious advantage in the line memorization department. The possibilities just seem way too fun.

[FlashWrogan]

Emotional allomancy would definitely be useful, but I am skeptical about the other two.

Pushing and pulling is not well suited for a theatre setting, as it you can usually push or pull only very strongly. That would make the abilities useful in very small and specific situations unless you had someone with extreme control over their power (like we saw with Kelsier and Zane).

Using copperminds would be useful for line memorization would only be useful for an emergency understudy or other immediate but short-lived assumption of a part, as you only remember the lines as well as you did when you first dumped the memories in the coppermind. If one of the leads was in an accident with the play that night, I could read the play into my coppermind, then pull it out piece by piece as I am performing it the night of. The only other advantage I see is to dump my memory of a part into the coppermind once the run of a play is over, then pull it out a few years down the road when we pick up the same play again so that the part is just as fresh in my memory.

[Phantom Monstrosity]

Pushing and pulling is not well suited for a theatre setting, as it you can usually push or pull only very strongly. That would make the abilities useful in very small and specific situations unless you had someone with extreme control over their power (like we saw with Kelsier and Zane).

Wax and... whatshername... the Gunsmith gal could both pull and push at limited enough strengths to operate machinery.

[FlashWrogan]

Wax and... whatshername... the Gunsmith gal could both pull and push at limited enough strengths to operate machinery.

Flipping a lever is easy. You can push or pull strong until you hear a click, then stop to avoid pushing yourself or the gun out of your hand. It doesn't really have anything to do with limiting strength. Virtually all instances of steel and iron use in the series involves pushing something with a large amount of force and speed. Trying to do weaker pushes is very hard. There is a conversation in FE between Vin and Kelsier when he is teaching her to jump off the wall about it. The only times we see the finer control that would be needed for the majority of jumps in a small theatre is when Kelsier is fighting the inquisitor and Zane sparring with Vin at keep Hastings.

[Windrunner]

While that's all true, it doesn't really mean that actors couldn't push gently. Allomancy is a skill, with enough practice they could learn. I don't see anything on par with Zane's abilities being likely, but surely soft pushes are just a matter of training. Vin had trouble with them early on, but she's obviously got enough control that she can pull them to her hand without injury after less than a year of training.

[Phantom Monstrosity]

Virtually all instances of steel and iron use in the series involves pushing something with a large amount of force and speed.

Because generally more force is more useful, as these people are involved in active combat.

[FlashWrogan]

While that's all true, it doesn't really mean that actors couldn't push gently. Allomancy is a skill, with enough practice they could learn. I don't see anything on par with Zane's abilities being likely, but surely soft pushes are just a matter of training. Vin had trouble with them early on, but she's obviously got enough control that she can pull them to her hand without injury after less than a year of training.

Perhaps I was overstating my case a bit. I reread the passage with Zane, and it seems like milder pushes might be attainable, but it is an extreme skill that a master has concentrate hard on to accomplish. Here's the quote.

It was possible to Push just slightly against a coin, regulating the amount of force with which one was thrown backward. It was incredibly difficult, however—so difficult that even Kelsier had struggled with it. Most of the time, Mistborn simply used short bursts. When Vin fell, for instance, she slowed herself by throwing a coin and Pushing against it briefly—but powerfully—to counteract her momentum.

She'd never seen an Allomancer with as much control as Zane. His ability to push slightly against that coin would be of little use in a fight; it obviously took too much concentration.

[Windrunner]

That's due, in part, to his Hemalurgy. I was referring to his amount of skill as something nearly unattainable, not the ability to push softly.

[tecslicer]

Coming from a theater background I am sure they would use allomancy or feruchemy in theater if it was available. And not just the actors. Stage hands could use stored strength, or pewter to move set peices on and off. Coinshots or lurchers would be able to move platforms or props around on the stage seemingly by magic! In the flyspaces they could be used to drop things then pull them back up (Ribbons, birds, metal-laced psuedu-ash.)

As for the actors, if the theater was set up anything like modern theaters (or Shakespearean theaters for that matter) there should be enough metal around to hover above the stage and move around wherever one wishes with a bit of practice. Simply by pushing out on stuff above and below and to the sides. Work? yes, you would need to practice every day just like you do to get your lines or blocking down.

But then on Scadrial the crowds would expect there to be allomancy. They wouldn't say "Wow, this Pan fellow is flying!" They would know he is a coinshot or lurcher. They would murmur that of course Cyrano was a tineye. With a nose that big it was a given. (Disambiguation note: Nobles would know. Skaa would not, but since the Skaa would never go out for the night...)

[Senor Feesh]

This actually raises an interesting point that I'd not thought of before.

In a world where Allomancy and Ferruchemy are becoming much more commonplace, might there be a) specialised jobs (which don't exist in our world) for people with these abilities, or inequality between people with metal-magics and people without?

Consider the most simple: obviously your labourers are going to be much more useful to you as Pewterarms or Brutes, whilst Archivists would probably make great journalists. There are probably many more examples that could be thought of (I could see someone starting a thread for it; that would be better than thread-jacking this if people want to discuss it).

So yeah, I had the idea because of tecslicer's comment about stagehands and huffing stage sets about, but it could be applied to other theatre roles too I'm sure.

[TheChronicFeruchemist]

I know that it is mentioned in Alloy of Law that there are either soother or rioter therapists, and that politicians ran of the platform that they were copper clouds so couldn't be influenced by soothers or rioters. So there was definitely jobs that used their allomancy as a a part of their work.

Though I don't think this whole thing would have happened until after the origin because the upper class simply didn't work in the arts in most of history. I'm also not sure that the lord ruler would have allowed the arts as we know it to flourish. When someone wants to control the population theatre is often one of the first things to go.