My question is obviously, why do you NEED a $6,000.00 projector? That's like saying "we NEED intelligent lights". We never used any projectors, but if we needed one, we would rent one from Christie Lites or some place like that. For anything else, we always made due with the AV Department's multimedia projectors. Not the best but we only needed one a handful of times. Our
theatre department certainly didn't hinge on it.
One thing we would do is have middle school dances. We would advertise the dance at all 3 of our middle schools in town (there are more now), and we would set up DJ Lights and a sound system in our cafeteria and get a bunch of those NOW CD's. We got our popcorn popper out, unplugged the school's vending machines, charged $1.00 for a bag of popcorn or canned drink, and other creative rip-off's and we could make almost $2,000. for the night. The concessions were usually donated by the parents, and I had my own DJ lighting system, which I would charge $125. for the night. At $5.00 a student, it wasn't too bad of a deal for them. We'd usually pack in about 300 and we'd also have a police officer present. I think he was one of the student's dad. It was great fun, sometimes a big headache, but all in all it provided us some nice toys and an extra kick in our show budget. Hope this helps.