You don't have to re-invent the wheel. Find what your favorite
lighting textbook calls them and
call them that. Note that the terms the author uses may well be a determining factor in what your favorite textbook is. (I, and many others here, like Steve Shelley's
A Practical Guide to Stage Lighting. One can save significantly by purchasing a used, older edition. It's not likely the names have changed over the years.) Alternatively, there's the WWW. Just find one you agree with and use that. For example,
http://stagelightingprimer.com/index.html?slfs-hanging_positions.html&2 .
As to side positions in the
auditorium,
Box Boom is the most used, whether or not there are actual box seats. Juliet is obviously slang, from that Shakespeare
play. (Do not confuse with
Juliat.) I've also seen them called
House Torms. And in more modern theatres, Slots or Side Slots. Most definitely do not
call them Coves, as a
cove is a horizontal ceiling position, i.e.
FOH,
Catwalk, A.P.,
etc.
@mtodd2qq Writing in full agreement with
@derekleffew and adding:
FOH positions, be they coves or booms, number out from the
proscenium / curtain
line thus
Cove or
Box Boom 1 is closest to the
stage with
Cove or
Box Boom (BB) 2 further away and so on with 3, 4 and 5. You've got the picture.
Balcony rails normally number from lower to upper keeping
track of the number of balconies and the number of rails per balcony. No balcony, dead simple. One balcony; possibly with an upper and lower
rail. Once you get into opera houses with 3, 4 or more balconies then add upper and lower rails per balcony, numbering schemes get a little more intense.
Once you're behind the
proscenium / curtain
line, those most
down stage (DS) are #1 and incrementing higher as they get further U/S (
Up Stage) Thus: 1st LX (
Electric) 2nd LX, 3rd LX and likewise with side booms regardless of whether they're free standing on heavy bases, castered and rolled into position or suspended from the overhead
grid. No matter their physicality. Furthest DS = lowest number. Side booms are normally also tagged as
Stage Left (SL) or
Stage Right (SR) Possibly abbreviated thus: SLB1, SLB2, SLB3, SLB4, etcetera , most often (Particularly in dance / ballet lighting) with mirror imaged mates across
stage on the opposite side thus: SRB1, SRB2, SRB3, SRB4 and so on. Other terms may be appended, for example: Booms US projecting beams and patterns across a
cyclorama / sky cloth may also be referred to as the
cyc booms (SL and SR of course) but they'll also likely still be numbered as the other booms regardless if they're the second
boom(s) or the eighth.
Instruments on booms routinely number from top to bottom and I'll leave it for others to confuse you when it comes to the myriad of numbering schemes on booms when you have two or three fixtures at each elevation as you're numbering your way down the booms.
There you go, more than you ever wanted to read on the subject. Have we totally spun your head yet?
Edit 1: Omitted the 'n' from
pattern.
Edit 2: Misspelled 'likely' as 'like'.
Edit 3: Incorrectly stated balconies, fingers got ahead of head. (Thank you
@derekleffew )
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.
