Sayen
Active Member
I could write pages about the mistakes made in my new theater, but an interesting problem came up recently, and I'm curious about how common this is, or if there's a way I can fix it.
Every light in the theater - house, vestibules, stage, and theatrical, along with circuits for work lights and flood lights - runs through the theatrical lighting system, dimmers and regulars, controlled from a fancy relay cabinet. The system has failed twice now, leaving the room in complete darkness.
If the power is cut to the building, the emergency lights kick on. But here's the catch - they don't come on if it's just a failure of the lighting system. We are approaching the end of a problem filled warranty period, and I realized this week that if the system fails during a performance with an auditorium full of people, the only way to restore lighting, even for an emergency, is to race upstairs in the dark, enter the dimmer room, and manually kill the power to trick the emergency lights into coming on.
Is this normal? Any advice, other than the usual emails to authorities above me to alert them (they'll ignore them)?
Every light in the theater - house, vestibules, stage, and theatrical, along with circuits for work lights and flood lights - runs through the theatrical lighting system, dimmers and regulars, controlled from a fancy relay cabinet. The system has failed twice now, leaving the room in complete darkness.
If the power is cut to the building, the emergency lights kick on. But here's the catch - they don't come on if it's just a failure of the lighting system. We are approaching the end of a problem filled warranty period, and I realized this week that if the system fails during a performance with an auditorium full of people, the only way to restore lighting, even for an emergency, is to race upstairs in the dark, enter the dimmer room, and manually kill the power to trick the emergency lights into coming on.
Is this normal? Any advice, other than the usual emails to authorities above me to alert them (they'll ignore them)?