We don't have a complete estimated startup budget yet, were in the process of creating one. Best guess is that it's going to be 30k plus the first few months rent, but that may turn out to be low. We do have a way of paying for the startup though, if a couple of angel donors come through which is looking likely.
So this is quite a small
theatre? I think for the
theatre and the 2 rehearsal rooms you will struggle to make that 30k work for everything you need. The trouble with a rental place, rather than being a producing
house, is that you're much more in need of having industry standard equipment as people hiring the space will need to be familiar with the equipment they're using.
$30k does not go that far. When you consider a fixed angle Source 4 comes in at about $1000, many small theatres could max out a $30k budget just buying their initial complement of profiles.
To work through your list, with some rough ideas:
-Grid (also wondering what this particular item will cost)
IMHO for $30k total budget you will not get a
grid and probably not be able to get even a fly
system. Not to mention that with 15ft ceilings, you have no room for a proper fly
system anyway. My instinct would be to go for fixed bars over the
stage, with access by either a big ladder (IE a Zarges 14 rung Skymaster) or with a small zip-up tower. The tower is much nicer to work in since you can
roll it with somebody in it, and make focussing much quicker.
I would recommend you have maybe 3-5 electrics bars (internally wired with spaced sockets) at fixed positions; and perhaps if you intend to fly much set, you could have a couple of
tab tracks - this would at least allow you to swipe a couple of different cloths on and off the
stage; as well as a fixed bar for either a cloth or a
cyc at furthest
up-stage.
Also each side of the
stage you would benefit from just putting a few simple pulleys and
sash cord in the roof to 4' scaff bars, just for hanging black legs on to give you a
bit of
masking in the wings.
-Lighting instruments
-Dimmers
-Light board
You're in luck - the market is better covered than ever with cheap lanterns. However you do tend to get what you pay for so pick wisely. Brands like
Altman ,
Chauvet and
Elation do
IMO offer a good quality product at an affordable price, their errr similiarity to major market products also makes them easy to give to visiting companies to use straight away. One thing you could consider, dare I say it - is going all
LED. There are decent
LED Profiles, Fresnels,
PAR Cans, and floods on the market now.... they will save you the investment in dimmers, save you a lot of investment in
power cabling (you can run many LEDs off the same
circuit and still have them individually controllable), they will save you electricity bills, and they will save you consumable costs IE lamps and
gel. Sadly you may get some opposition from hirers, but it's a consideration you should not knock, because of the opportunity to save significant infrastructure costs.
In terms of a
desk, all the professional options are going to take a chunk from the budget. Ions are expensive, the MA2 Command
Wing is almost sensible but still represents 1/6th of your budget. I would strongly consider a Mini
Wing or PC
Wing from
Chamsys could be a sensible option, you should be able to get a Mini
Wing for around $1000 I think. It would give you 1
universe of
DMX which I would expect to be ample for now. Then you would just need some kind of simple computer for control, a touch
screen option would be appreciated I think but you will still want a
mouse for encoders. One benefit of
Chamsys is their training is very good and the software is free and easy to learn. It's
theatre functionality is about the best for the money, in my opinion.
-Sound Board
-Sound
System
-Sound Proofing
I will leave this to somebody else's expertise as I am not a sound professional.
Retractable seating is always popular but often not a very well thought out idea. A
theatre I used to live near spent a great deal of it's start up budget putting in retractable seating so they could do
theatre or stand up concerts. But then came a noise limit of about 87dB and it's obvious you can't do a rock concert on that... so the retractable seating has simply not been retracted... ever.
There is a decent amount of evidence that the council deliberately did that - installing the versatile seating to get funding as a 'multipurpose venue' and allowing them to shut down the local council run rock venue; and then 'accidentally' later discovering the soundproofing was not sufficient for a concert and it could only be used for theatre which is far more in fitting with the town's snooty council. But the forum is not for politics.
It's perfectly possible that some reasonable grad stackable plastic chairs, along with some tiered platforms (IE Litedeck) which could be used both for seating or on
stage, could be a great deal cheaper than a retractable seating; and more
practical providing you can get some nice volunteer ushers who're happy to set the chairs and remove them for each show. You could also possibly store them off-site, somewhere cheaper like a self storage
unit, and bring them in only as needed, so as not to occupy valuable space in the
theatre.
But of course you can also consider the possibility of permanently installed seating. If you don't foresee a need to ever remove it, why design it to allow for that?
Sadly tabs, cloths
etc are seldom available in good nick, second
hand. Theatres tend to hold on to them for as long as possible as do event companies. There will always be jobs where they'd rather use their tatty old tabs than brand new ones, so they'll keep them for that. This might be an area you have to bite the bullet and go new. However, there have been some great prices online for molten felt, which is a fairly nice looking material and pretty efficient at
masking. It can be had in most colours and in large pieces. Thomann in Europe were doing some great prices on it and it's well worth looking into.
