backstageguy
Member
Hiya guys,
I'm a stage manager at my school and the director of our theatre is presently attempting to change the way we would deal with a potential fire. As he is more of an actor than a technician, I would like to get a more technical opinion on this.
Our theatre has aproximatley 160 seats, and is part of one of our school buildings, apart from the rooms we use as our dressing rooms, the block has roughly 13 other classrooms. The plan of our director is for ever show to turn off the sounders for our fire alarm and instead rely on the small beacon we are going to install in our tech booth. In the event of the beacon going off
our technical director is going to go downstairs into the foyer where our fire control panel is, find out the zone of the possible fire, then return to the tech booth where our sound technician will make an announcement saying "mr sands is in XandX location" and from this the FOH team will decide on the safest route to
evacuate the audience.
Ok, well my problems start with this, our Fire Officer is very strict and so considering that someone could have sneaked into one of the 13 rooms, I dont think he will allow us to silence the sounders which in many cases is understandable. Ok so assuming we were allowed to go ahead with the plan, during a show, a small blinking light is extremely likely to just not be noticed and overlooked, the next problem I can see is that the TD is going to have to run down stairs and work out what zone this 'fire' is in, at this stage, he would be closer to the FOH managment then the actual tech booth, so it would seem more sensible to just go straight to the FOH manager and tell them where the fire is. However in line with the plan, our guy returns and tells the sound technician who then procedes to make his announcement. Next problem is that the actors will still be unaware of whats going on, and so the FOH person will have to struggle to hear a muffled anouncement from someone running sound whilst actors are speaking over them.
Basically I would like to see some other people's opinions, I know I've been a bit biased there, but I just think the standard procedure of a SM going and making an announcement would work much better?
Thanks for all your help and opinions.
I'm a stage manager at my school and the director of our theatre is presently attempting to change the way we would deal with a potential fire. As he is more of an actor than a technician, I would like to get a more technical opinion on this.
Our theatre has aproximatley 160 seats, and is part of one of our school buildings, apart from the rooms we use as our dressing rooms, the block has roughly 13 other classrooms. The plan of our director is for ever show to turn off the sounders for our fire alarm and instead rely on the small beacon we are going to install in our tech booth. In the event of the beacon going off
our technical director is going to go downstairs into the foyer where our fire control panel is, find out the zone of the possible fire, then return to the tech booth where our sound technician will make an announcement saying "mr sands is in XandX location" and from this the FOH team will decide on the safest route to
evacuate the audience.
Ok, well my problems start with this, our Fire Officer is very strict and so considering that someone could have sneaked into one of the 13 rooms, I dont think he will allow us to silence the sounders which in many cases is understandable. Ok so assuming we were allowed to go ahead with the plan, during a show, a small blinking light is extremely likely to just not be noticed and overlooked, the next problem I can see is that the TD is going to have to run down stairs and work out what zone this 'fire' is in, at this stage, he would be closer to the FOH managment then the actual tech booth, so it would seem more sensible to just go straight to the FOH manager and tell them where the fire is. However in line with the plan, our guy returns and tells the sound technician who then procedes to make his announcement. Next problem is that the actors will still be unaware of whats going on, and so the FOH person will have to struggle to hear a muffled anouncement from someone running sound whilst actors are speaking over them.
Basically I would like to see some other people's opinions, I know I've been a bit biased there, but I just think the standard procedure of a SM going and making an announcement would work much better?
Thanks for all your help and opinions.
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