How do you keep your Black Box theater between shows

[gafftaper]

So as I've gone on about for a couple years now, my new black box theater is nearing completion. My question is what do you do with your black box between shows? Do you have a default seating configuration you go back to? Do you have a rep light plot? If so what is it?

At this point I'm thinking that since the theater is going to be a class room and used for things like guest lectures between shows, returning to a thrust seating configuration with a thrust rep plot makes sense to me.

What do you do?

[icewolf08]

At Ithaca college, we kept our small theatre (essentially a black box) in a basic configuration, though in my time there they purchased new seating stands and experimented with a few different configs. The standard config was a thrust, and actually, usually only one show out of the year was done in the round. The theatre had HMI work lights, house lights, as well as some Source Four PARs that all ran on an architecture system so that teachers who used the space for class could turn lights on and off easy. We always struck all the theatre fixtures between shows.

I would think though, that if you know that you are going to have lectures on a regular basis you might want to set up a basic wash that is easy to turn on that covers where a lecturer might stand/present.

[Grog12]

I can't even begin to tell you how much I hate it when they use theatre spaces as classrooms.

Typically we strike everything in our BB.

If I were in your situation I'd probably leave the seating configured however it was during the show and hang a few Fresnels to light up the stage when the lecturer came in. During the summer we do this for the Music dept who uses the space constantly and the fight workshop that comes in.

[gafftaper]

Thanks. Anybody see a black box set their seats back to Proscenium style?

[Grog12]

Yeah I've done that. If you have a big black box it doesn't work so hot. Ours is 40' by 40' and the people on the sides end up having to crain their neck around a lot to see what's going on.

[mbenonis]

We typically strike everything except the seating, which stays in the configuration it was in for the last show (why move it twice - it's a lot of seating!). The space is used during the day for classes, but they just adapt to the new seating.

[jonhirsh]

At CalArts we strip all are theatres back to a zero affter every show.

This means no house lights, no fixtures, no cable. All thats left are the raceways and grid.


JH

[gafftaper]

Originally Posted by mbenonis

We typically strike everything except the seating, which stays in the configuration it was in for the last show (why move it twice - it's a lot of seating!).

Oh I do like that idea. I hadn't thought about it that way.

[gafftaper]

Originally Posted by jonhirsh

At CalArts we strip all are theatres back to a zero affter every show.
This means no house lights, no fixtures, no cable. All thats left are the raceways and grid.
JH

I'm not a huge fan of a complete strip down. I prefer a return to a basic plot with getting semi-stripped... as in hanging on a batten that isn't too far away. On one hand you'll just have to pull all the instruments and cable the next time you hang. On the other hand you don't want to have to spend a lot of time hauling things in and out of storage. My catwalks have a great perimeter hand rail that will hang lights not in use really well and they will be barely visible from below. The question is how to build a cable rack in the catwalks... Have to think that one over.

Anybody got a storage rack in their catwalks?

[jonhirsh]

Our theatres are not used in between shows. We have no rep-plot as we never have the inventory to keep all our spaces open with the needed inventory for those shows.

So if we had dedicated inventory to each space that was hung as a rep plot we would never be able to actualy design anything.

JH