Flying

Many set pieces, cloth backgrounds, gauzes etc are suspended over the stage and "flown" is when they are needed.

The Crescent stage has approximately 30 flying bars, all hand operated.  Flyers move the bars up and down by pulling on ropes, accessible from the fly gallery, approximately 25 feet above the stage level.

All the bars are counterbalanced so that, even if a heavy piece of scenery is suspended from the bar, it does not require super-human strength to move it.

A head for heights helps - the picture below shows the flying operator's view of the stage during Into the Woods.