School theater budget cuts HELP!!

[DHSLXOP]

Do a talent show among the performing arts kids (or among the entire school). When my school went to mainstage at state thespians a couple years ago, we did a talent show to offset some of the costs. Parents, grandparents, and fellow students love to come out to that sort of thing - try to get other teachers involved - depending on the relationship between students/teachers at your school, more people may want to come if they see that their english and math teachers were also performing. Charge it appropriately to the number of seats in your theatre, and you can raise a good portion of the profit that one show.

[Kelite]

Originally Posted by EXQEX9

My highschool rents out and sells the sets we build. You can try something like that.


Also, give your district a swift kick in the shin for me.

I can certainly agree with renting and selling the sets as it's the ultimate in recycling (with cash in hand to boot) and saves the next theater time and labor.

With the spike in oil prices, I can only imagine how the transportation budget would be burdened. Granted most school corporations purchase fuel for their busses many months in advance, the added expense is crushing the general budget. Ugh.....

[gafftaper]

What happens to the rental fees for the auditorium? They should be coming back to the building to pay for it's maintenance. You shouldn't have to worry about the video projector. Tell the administration/district... the projector is broken, a new one costs $6k, until you get us a new projector we won't be able to host any events that require video. Someone will find the money.

As for the rest of your troubles in general. I ran my high school theater department on my cut of the money they got from the coke machine in the student store. It worked out to about $600 a year. I had to make every show budget balance. By the time I left I left a $5k surplus in my account. You can run a theater on very little money. It's also VERY unlikely that your 10 year old lighting equipment needs replacement. I know a couple places that would kill to have lighting equipment that is less than 25 years old. It's all about perspective my friend. Most school theaters don't get nearly as much as you have been given in the past.

[Les]

I have to agree with gafftaper. To echo what he said, the theatre department should not be responsible for buying equipment everyone else will use for free.

[lieperjp]

Originally Posted by gafftaper

It's also VERY unlikely that your 10 year old lighting equipment needs replacement. I know a couple places that would kill to have lighting equipment that is less than 25 years old.

It's true!!!

[Dustincoc]

Originally Posted by tech2000

Our theater is used for assemblies, meetings, talent shows, plays/musicals, and even movies every once in a while. (We are basically the AV department). The projection distance is too long and the brightness too dim for an average multimedia projector.

Plus, our school district has a contract with Epson right now and will only allow us to purchase certain Epson projectors. The district has contracts with many companies and when we tried to buy a camcorder last year, they would only let us buy a really crappy one so we didn't.
Since we are rented fairly often, we need the projector in case either the renter decides to use it, or the administration spontaneously shows up with an assembly.

The dance idea seems like it could make some money.

Why does the theatre department have to buy equipment for everyone else to use? If they want a projector for assemblies any you dont have one for something, maybe they will see that they need to get one. Let the administration look bad a time or two because you don't have the funds and funds usually start appearing. Our building(including the theatre) has old radiator heating, during one preformance when the one of the top school officials had visitors come, the radiators started clanking loudly(as they always have). There was talk of getting a new heating system shortly after. Never happened but the entire space is being gutted and remodeled next year(something about patrons wondering why a program as good as ours doesn't have a better space, the space was a gym that was handed to the department 30 years ago and some seating was built against one wall and a procenuium made of flats was erected. It's been through 2-3 renovations since but its still a gym that functions as a theatre, we've got very little backstage space and the floor drops 3 inches over 10 feet)