First, I'm not sure if this is the right forum to post this in, let me know if I should move it. This is mostly about lighting maintenance, so I figured it belongs here.
Second, my apologies for the long post - I tried to make it as short as I could.
I am helping my son “fix” the theater at his high school and am looking for some advice for fixing the underlying issues that got it to the state it is now. The school was built in 2005, yet I don’t think any of the lighting instruments have been maintained. As far as I have been able to discern through conversations with folks in the school, there is no person who has the responsibility of maintaining the lighting instruments. Over the past 4 ½ years I have heard anecdotes from my son, other students, and some teachers about how bad the state of the equipment is. My son and I with the help of the choir director have been going through the lighting and sound systems in the
auditorium.
It appears that what has happened over the years is that a student will find an
instrument that they determine “doesn’t work”, and they put it with all the other “these don’t work” instruments because that’s what they’ve been told by other students who were likely told to “put it over there” when they brought it to someone’s attention. So you wind up with a pile of “these don’t work”. The problem is, nobody knew what was really bad, what needed repairs, and how much those would cost so the stuff keeps piling up. I'm guessing this is not uncommon - especially in the HS
arena.
I am not pointing fingers at anyone. I understand there are budget/monetary issues involved.
We took an inventory and cursory inspection of the lighting instruments ant what we found was not pretty:
- 18 of 30 fresnels (Altman 1KAF-MPF) need their socket replaced for sure and the bulbs are somewhat loose in most of the others. It appears the spring on the center pin in the sockets have worn out (side note – should this have happened after only 8 years?).
- At least 6 of 30 ERS instruments (Strand SL Coolbeam) need their sockets replaced. These problems seem to stem from improper bulb insertion. When we were checking these instruments, we found quite a few where the lamp was not inserted all the way.
- There are also 9 8x13 Strand Century Lekos that came from a local theater. Only 2 of these need new sockets, but are in desperate need of cleaning. There was stuff (bugs) baked on the back side of the lens in one I took home to clean and took quite a bit of elbow grease to clean it.
None of the fixtures have ever been cleaned (or at least it appears that way). I’ve taken a couple home to repair and clean and the amount of dust on the lenses was insane.
I’d like to help the school implement a maintenance plan and I am looking for advice either from those who’ve been in similar situations or from high school theater managers.
A couple of areas where I’d like some advice on:
Educating the tech crew students about
instrument maintenance (lamp replacement/cleaning/inspection/repair).
I’ve thought about having a “
intro to lighting” class which would explain the basics of lighting, the proper terms,
etc., how to clean and inspect an
instrument, how to replace lamps, and maybe even simple repairs. Has anyone done this? Is the audience receptive? Have you found that HS students are capable of these tasks when taught? If you’ve done something like this, has it worked? My son is a sophomore, so he will be around for a couple more years. Any advice on how to keep it going? On how to recruit more students to help? There are over 2000 students in this school, so it’s not small.
Approaching the school administration
Unfortunately, much of this repair work has piled up over the years and we’re looking at over $1000 to repair everything and have a few spare lamps and sockets around. I’ve documented the inventory we took and itemized the costs and the choir director has sent it along to the administration and we will meet with them soon to discuss what can and can’t be done and who will pay for it. (I personally don’t feel that it should be just the fine arts department & theater budget as there are outside groups that use the space as well). On top of that, the lighting board/software is flaky – there are times when the entire lighting
system shuts off for no apparent reason – so we are looking for them to replace some of that as well. Possibly a new light board and replacing some inoperative
dimmer modules on the electrics. Any tips on how best to approch this?
Additionally, I think it would be a good idea to have a procedure to report inoperative instruments so that the pile doesn’t grow until there are no more working lights (the path they are on now). Has anyone put one in place when there is no “theater manager” position at the school?
Thanks in
advance for any advice.