My situation is atypical. The players are all of the following:
The Drama Coach: She's a local preschool teacher with directing experience who, for a very small stipend, virtually volunteers to direct/produce two musicals every year at (what used to be) my son's middle school. She is a fabulously talented woman who knows very little about theater lighting tech, and is counting on me to deliver that knowledge.
The PTA: They are the treasury in this story and have the
power to allocate money as they deem fit. The dramatic productions are actually revenue generators, so they are smart enough to know that investing some of that profit back into the theater makes good business sense. But they also include a lot of parents who see sports equipment and other things as high-priority items. Talking them into backing a four-figure
purchase was a major stroke of diplomacy by The Drama Coach.
The Parents of the Drama Club Members: They are the ones who lobbied for the PTA to use proceeds from the last couple of shows to buy some new gear for the
auditorium/theater, including a
cyc, some
footlights, and the replacement lighthing
console. They know varying degrees about theater, but none of them knows anything about lighthing tech. They are counting on me to deliver that knowledge.
The Middle School Administration: They are actually pretty friendly to drama, but are nervous about allowing non-staff to be making choices about complicated equipment that will go into their existing lighting
system. By showing them we could make fuller use of their existing equipment than anyone ever has before, we have earned a degree of their trust. But they are wary and making any mistakes that cause them to doubt us could be fatal to that trust.
FullCompass: A saintly vendor that has offered us an extended try-and-buy deal on the CS20, since no one here (including me) really knew if it would work for us (and, thank Ghu that they did, as it appears it just won't).
Me: I'm a volunteer with a lot of technical skills, but only early
amateur level knowledge of theatrical lighthing. Pretty much everyone above is putting their faith in me to make sure they spend as little as possible in order to get a device that will actually work and that sixth, seventh, and eighth graders can use.
So, if I were to go back to them and say, "Well, the CS20 won't cut it, but I'm really, kinda, pretty, almost certain that, for another nine-hundred bucks, the CS40 will get the job done," they might say, "Oh, well, if that's what you think we need to do, we'll do it." But, it is at least as likely that they will say, "What? You told use this eighteen-hundred-dollar machine was what we needed. Now you want
more money? How do we know this will work any better?"
In a sense, I really don't have a client. I have an opportunity to convince a large group of people to make a particular choice that will, for a long time, allow their children to produce plays that include decent, basic lighting cues, with those children running the lights themselves. Throwing the decision back to them will only have them questioning how useful my advice really is, and leave them that much more baffled about what to do.
As a lawyer, I
face this problem all the time. You want your client to know enough to make wise choices, but you also have a duty to give advice when you think you know which choice is best. If you are competent, your advice is pretty good. Here, though, I have nowhere near the same
level of expertise in theater lighting that I have in the practice of law. That's why I'm a volunteer on this, dig?
I'm learning it as I go along (with a lot of great help from folks in this forum), hoping I don't screw the pooch before getting all these good and trusting folks to buy a device that will work for them.
At this
point, JimOC_1's suggestion about using the low-cost Scene Setter-48 in a kind mixed programmed/
manual mode looks very promising, and he's arranged for me to borrow one so I can test it directly. If it works out, I'll demonstrate it for The Drama Coach and, at that
point, she will make the actual decision.
I do like the CS20, by the way. It's a pretty nifty little
console with a lot features for the price. But, it won't run 48 dimmers, has a lot of features we'll never use, and is simply too complicated for a middle-schooler to operate.
More soon...
