HS Fixture Inventory

Without getting detailed, how many theatrical fixtures do you think the average hs has in their theatre? I would guess some have nearly none of just a dozen, and a few might have 200-250. But the mean or median - 75? Just your instinct.

This industry really needs better stats - safety, equipment, staff. So often I "wish I knew" the average this or that.

When I was in high school we probably had around 60.
24 lekos for our box booms,
4 10* source fours for the later added balcony rail.
A dozen 360's and even older altman ellipsiodals. Though only half of them worked.
4 or 5 65q fresnels,
4 or 5 75q fresnels
5 scoops
3 electrics of strip lights
and 6 3 cell cyc lights.
And when I graduated in 2004 they had ordered 4 19* source 4's.

All that pretty well maxed out the dimming. We had a single rack of CD-80s and around a dozen of those channels went to house lights.

You could try doing a poll on CB. I suspect the results would be skewed though since most people here are probably on the higher end of the curve.

Yeah, I could try.

I need to cut some out of a project and the school board wants to know where it will leave them in relation to other high schools. Impossible really but at least a try.

Well, in rural Pennsylvania where I deal with a bunch of different school districts . . .

A small local High School that graduates 70 kids a year has 12 360q's and three electrics worth of strip lights.
The high school up the road that graduates 65 kids has no front of house positions, three electrics worth of 4 color strip lights, maybe 20 65Q's and 4 scoops for their cyc.
The big high school that graduates around 175 kids has 24 360q's, a dozen StarPars they never use, 21 65q's and 9 single cell sky cycs. No strip lights.
The really big high school which graduates 225 kids has 18 Source Fours, 12 SourcePars, and 6 sets of 4 cell Altman econo-cycs.
That district's middle school has no main front of house pipe (just a pair of box booms that are in line with the apron), 20 1KL6's, a dozen scoops and 2 electrics (2nd & 3rd) of strip lights.
The Catholic high school which graduates 35 kids has 2 Source Fours, 8 360q's and an electric and a half of strip lights.
A medium high school to the south which graduates around 100 kids just got 38 Altman PHX's (tungsten), 5 sets of three cell econocycs. They already had 20 65q's and three electrics of strip lights. Until they put in the PHX's last year they had 20 1KL6's and a dozen of whatever came before the 360q (36q?) and some little wee baby lekos.
Then there's the high school well to the north of us with no auditorium.

Mean vs median vs mode probably has a large impact on the number - some big outliers on both ends. If I had to stab at it, my impression having visited a few and worked in one as a student and another professionally is that they tend to have just enough for one wash from front, top, box boom, sometimes pipe ends (or a few specials instead), and cyc, all with widest lens and spacing viable for the throw. I'd say commonly 3x3 from the top and 5x2 deep from front (or 6x2 for a sparse McCandless), 4 or 8 per side in the boxes, 3 electrics with 2 fixtures on each pipe end. Maybe 5 across the cyc. Maybe 45 total. But around here there are lots following the build it and rent it model so a little bigger. Still sparsely equipped though.

Fascinating important question - and one to PLSN and Stage..., as with USITT and other outlets. There probably is not a good study which can be pin-pointed in map yet done yet. LED's & movers will complicate this map but not in a way that can't be overcome. Following the study and reach out... perhaps something really of interest can be found. (Good term paper MA paper to do in reaching out beyond the responders.)

I would think depends on size of population attending. Other people have attested to size of graduation levels important but in some ways also not fair for education. As we have also seen on CB, people asking about moving lights for their HS, verses I had well over a 100x for our main stage - not including the other theater... back in 86' Been to schools... all in one where they have architectural strips with various lamps & some like 6 1950's PC's not in use at FOH in the Gymatorium, and them just asking for falling apart drape replacement. ETC.

Great question but should be studied. As for your imideate question taken from the above, if figuring it out I would ask local theater's their graduating class and theater fixture inventory locally to get a starting base for work. The above basis in concept would help though. Need some MFA students I think to get such a study done though.

BillConnerFASTC said:

Yeah, I could try.

I need to cut some out of a project and the school board wants to know where it will leave them in relation to other high schools. Impossible really but at least a try.

Click to expand...

Bill, perhaps an approach is to find some nearby comparable sized stages that you'd consider minimally equipped and well equipped - so again like I said earlier, the minimum functional inventory I see in most of these spaces I go into is just a single wash from front and top, plus cyc and that's about it, and then there's whatever you're recommending. Everywhere in higher ed anyway, and in real estate which maybe sort of applies, it's local and regional comps that matter and not something so broad as your initial post implies to me (as interesting as it would be to have broader data).

I feel like in my experience it would be skewed to the middle because I rarely see places with 70 ish. Most of the schools I've been in either have JUST what was hung originally and it might be 30 lights total, OR its a large facility with hundreds.

If you average the two ends I usually see, you end up with a scenario I rarely see. Generally speaking when I do see the "median", its still the 30 that get them a stage wash and the other 30-40 are broken or in pieces in a closet.

I TD for a mid-size (299 seat) community theatre. I would say it's on par with the high schools in my area in terms of inventory and dimmer count.

Main Stage
Ellipsoidals: 75
Fresnels: 20
Par 64: 12 (being phased out; originally had 24)
LED Wash: 12
LED Cyc: 8 (SpectraCyc)

Dimmer Count: 192
Relays (Echo Addition): 24

Blackbox (Annex)
Ellipsoidals: 8
Fresnels: 12
Par 64: 12 (retired from main stage)

Dimmer Count: 24

Yeah Les - the TX factor - some legislation that requires some paraity between spending on the arts and athletics in schools. That's why this is so hard to answer.

I believe ETC compiled some stats around the time they introduced ColorSource so am checking on that. God bless them for great record keeping.

And thanks all for the thoughts and responses.

The High School Performing Arts Center I work at has the following:
23x 19deg S4
39x 26deg S4
21x 36deg S4
5x 50deg S4
8x 25-50 S4 Zoom
9x 36degEDLT S4
10x 19deg Strand SL
10x 26deg Strand SL
15x 36deg Strand SL
18x Altman Star Par
12x Altman Par 64
54x Fresnel (Strand/Altman/Century)
13x Altman R40 Strips
2x Lycian SuperStar 1.2k
3x 3cell Altman Skycyc
2x 2cell Altman Skycyc
2x 1cell Altman Skycyc
A smattering of older ERS fixtures we are trying to replace but use for 'permanent' locations(lecturn/curtain warmers/etc.)

I think a more indepth pole may be inorder (survey monkey) As I think what is more pertinent are questions like. Rough demeinsions of stage, how many people does the school serve, how many people does the auditorium hold. Level of arts program budget/support, (low medium high.) general location of school (west, midwest, mountians, east coast). Rural/ Suburban, City.

Then get into How many Dimmers? Fixtures? Control?

I think all the stuff above is really imporant to get a sense of what is a needed. 200 fixtures in a auditorim that seats 150, is probably an overkill outlier, just like an auditorium with a stage at 1600sqft, that seats 1000, and on,y has 50 fixtures, is an outlier on the other end.

I'd be happy to answer a survey monkey type thing or help develelope one with you and can answer for a number of HS's in North Jersey.

If you're doing a more in-depth survey, I might also suggest including design or install company if known. That might provide some interesting correlations. For me in upstate NY - I have about 30 source 4s, 20 S4Jrs, 60 fresnels, 15 L&E strips, 7 cyc lights, and 2 VL1100s on about 150 circuits. Our auditorium was completely redone in 2010 and all inventory is new at that time. Control is via a Strand Palette (yes, they do exist in the wild, and yes, I wish they didn't). Unfortunately no LEDs, and DMX was only distributed to the FOH electric to the 2 movers (even though each electric has a DMX port, grrrr).

Chris

Thanks JJ. For sheer quantity of fixtures in a single high school theatre you are probably in the top 5 or 10% among the ~50,000 US high schools. I'm sure not a coincidence that you are in ETC's home town.

Do keep it coming. At some point I will post at least a summary of what I end up with for this short study, a peek-a-boo, and no doubt it will probably be largely conjecture and hypothesis.

Thanks again.

From the schools that I walk into for service related things, I think 48 is a pretty solid average. They generally have an old CD-80, Electronics Diversified, or ETC Sensor Classic fully populated single rack. Those are usually run to some sort of raceway distribution with some floor or wall access points. Two-fering common, but not usually three-fers. Lots of unused circuits because the circuit they run to isn't in a convenient location. Sometimes on the lower end I'll see 24-36 fixtures (or fewer), but those are usually middle schools, churches, those kinds of spaces that have pieced together a system over the years. High schools tend to have older systems that were well intentioned, but very out of date. Often they haven't purchased fixtures since they were constructed. Usually they started out with a solid 60-100 lights, but over the years they haven't kept up with maintenance or haven't been able to source lamps.

Take all of that with a couple grains of salt since it is based solely on memory.

22 419
24 426
26 436
26 8" fresnel
12 6 fresnel
4 3cell cyc
2 rightarm w 426
2 icue w 419
1 big stack of r40 strips, and other unused that deserve smattering.

186 2.4k cd80
4 6k cd80

Lab
20 zoom ers by strand

36 2.4k

HS / Community Auditorium
Think that at least 4 other hs venues within the state of AK would have comparable inventory .
2 districts have a centralized staff that take care of multiple facilities.
Others have at least one informed staff member that deals with technical aspects.

When I was in high school, our theatre - the "Little Theater" (they had planned to build a big one too but never did) had two rows of 100W strip lights on stage (behind proscenium) pointed straight down with glass gel options. Mind you the front row was split L1/L2 and R1/R2/R3 and the back row was L1+R1 / L2+R2 / L3 (right was 1/2/1/2/1/2/..., left was 1/2/3/1/2/3/1/2/3/3/2/1/3/2/1/3/2/1). We also had four or six can lamps on the apron that were there more for 'classroom' than stage (and were not through the dimmer system) and a pipe just past the apron that had three ERSs, two or three 300W fresnels and one 1k fresnel. And one manned spotlight in the rear of the theatre with shutters, iris, and 6 flip-down gel holders. I think it took a 150W A-base but I'm not positive. Oh, and the district wouldn't let anyone but custodial staff touch them so we would maybe once per year convince a custodian to re-point them to rough locations and work with where they ended up. That 1k fresnel lit half the stage. I think the theater may seat 200-250.

Private high school with very good fine arts program. Added the auditorium to the building 12 years ago with the following equipment:

• Leo Ellipsoidals:
  • 19 degree - 2
  • 26 degree - 14
  • 36 degree - 6
• Altman 65Q Fresnels - 12
• ETC Source 4 PAR EA - 6
• Leviton Leo Cyc Strips (3 circuits, 6 lamps per fixture) - 8

Since opening the auditorium we've added the following:

• ETC Source 4 50 degree ellipsoidals - 2
• ETC Source 4 PAR EA - 3 more (the total inventory is now 9)
• Used 16" Scoop lights (unknown brand) - 20
• Used Wybron Colaram II Scrollers - 20

Depending on the show we may rent additional Lekos, LED wash lights and/or movers.