HS theater maintenance advice sought

[derekleffew]

... By the way, where are you in this great big world? Maybe there's someone here on CB who lives in the same area and is willing to help you out and give you local advice.

Stating a Location used to be mandatory, when/why did that change?

As a matter of fact, @OddThomas is just a hop away from @len and @BillConnerASTC .

 

[jcslighting]

How to get help. I used to be a Drama teacher in a poorly funded urban school. These are two of my most successful tricks to get money.

1) Everyone has a budget which vaporizes at the end of the school year and resets the following year. I would make a shopping list on it have everything from $10 items to $10,000 items and start talking to department heads, the book keeper, and administration to find out if anyone is not going to spend all of their money. Often people will leave a couple hundred dollars here and there unspent. That's a gold mine of small purchases. Sometimes there will be a couple thousand dollars left unspent. Get the book keeper and an administrator on your side and be ready to spend anything from $20 to $2000 at a moment's notice. This end the year money often has to be spent fast, right at the deadline. The book keeper would say, "I've got $400 for you but I need you to spend it by the time I go home today" and I would grab my list and start shopping.

2) Do the following math... For every fixture in your inventory (dead or alive) take the cost of buying a new lamp and divide it by the average life of that lamp. Now total them all up. Round up another buck or two to take into account the cost of gel, wear on lamp sockets and other repairs. Now you have the hidden cost per hour of turning all the lights on. You'll probably find that it's $5-$10 per hour. Every assembly, community user, class that wants to use the theater for a special event is costing this much, PTA meeting, and no one is paying for it. It doesn't sound like much, but over time you end up with a stack of dead fixtures that will cost $1000 to repair. If you want to get really nuts, take the next step and figure out how many hours a year those lights are on and who is using them. Now, take your magic number and educate people about it. Show off the stack of lights you have that all need lamps. Explain that you can't just buy a 99 cent bulb at home depot, your lamps cost $15-$20 each. I was able to get student government to chip in $300 a year from their budget for lamps. I also got a $10 per hour charge added to all rentals as well.

Good luck!

These are fantastic ideas! I may have to try the 1st one out on a couple of the schools that I am currently working with.

At one venue we had an interesting battle. We needed replacement lamps and the school admin refused to pay for them stating that it was the drama club's problem. After discussing it with the drama dept. chairperson, we decided to strike all of the lighting to the pipe after every drama club show. This left only white striplights onstage to cover meetings and concerts plus any rentals to say dance companies. Amazingly enough the policy changed and they wanted a lamp order from us to replace enough lamps for the entire year. We now make this common practice every fall as school starts, to place a lamp order for the upcoming season.

One other suggestion is to take any income the school receives from renting the facility and place that into an account to be used only for the purpose of the theatre. Most schools rent out their theatre to community groups such as churches and dance companies, some even let community theatre groups use them over the summer months. Take all that rental cash and set it aside to repair and upgrade. One of the local schools did it here and is able not only to replace lamps but microphones, color, cables, and even occasionally purchase new equipment. Most schools here in Northern Kentucky get from $800 - $1600 a day to rent the space and most of those renters use the lighting system for their events so why not get some benefit from all that influx of cash?

 

[gafftaper]

I manage a high school PAC. All the money raised by renting the theater out to others stays in my budget. Part of it pays some of my salary, the rest is for major purchases and maintenance. On the other hand, the district I taught in a few years ago , the district would take any money spent on rentals for the facilities department. None of it stayed in the building. So there is definitely a big difference on a district by district basis.

 

[lwinters630]

I did not see safety cables posted yet. . . . . so,
One more thing to add to your training is the proper way to hang a fixture and how every fixture must have a safety cable.

I have also found that starting a theater tech club in the high school will help build a team and a way for the freshmen to move up the ranks as the seniors graduate.

 

[OddThomas]

Stating a Location used to be mandatory, when/why did that change?

As a matter of fact, @OddThomas is just a hop away from @len and @BillConnerASTC .

@derekleffew how did you figure that out? I have updated my location in my profile now - and it wasn't required when I signed up, by the way.

 

[OddThomas]

I did not see safety cables posted yet. . . . . so,
One more thing to add to your training is the proper way to hang a fixture and how every fixture must have a safety cable.

I have also found that starting a theater tech club in the high school will help build a team and a way for the freshmen to move up the ranks as the seniors graduate.

Fortunately, safety cables have always been stressed and used. Every instrument has a safety cable, even if it is in the "doesn't work" pile. However, to be on the safe side, I will probably be attaching them to the yoke as has been suggested elsewhere here.

As far as the theater tech club, my son and I have discussed doing exactly that. He will likely be looking into that as the spring musical is just getting underway.

 

[len]

Derek works for NSA on the side.

 

[TheaterEd]

@derekleffew how did you figure that out? I have updated my location in my profile now - and it wasn't required when I signed up, by the way.

Although I don't know how it works. I think he was able to deduce it from your IP address. He is very very sneaky. I fear you are underestimating the sneakiness, sir.

 

[OddThomas]

Although I don't know how it works. I think he was able to deduce it from your IP address. He is very very sneaky. I fear you are underestimating the sneakiness, sir.

Kinda what I figured as well...