Outside Groups

[RonHebbard]

Bodybuilders... I'm lucky I haven't even though of that type of show until now. I'll have nightmares of what those groups are like from now on, even without having dealt with any.

Let's not totally malign body builders as rentals go. Aside from the lingering aroma of coconut oils, most of them are genuinely good people, both females and males, and at least as devoted to their interests as the majority of us are to ours. In most cases, I found them no more . . . "annoying" . . . than 'dance Moms' as a category. Here's a little more background / detail on the incident I mentioned earlier:
The fellow who was murdered in the lobby had been a real sweetheart all day. A few years previously, he had competed regularly and was consistently winning in his categories on an annual basis. One year he announced his retirement from competitive bodybuilding and eased his way into advanced, competitive, training; physically, emotionally and diet-wise. At that point he began renting table space in the lobby to market his wares. He was maybe 60 years of age and that's a total guesstimate. At that point in time, we were seeing competitive bodybuilding rentals two, possibly three, times per year. They got to know us and the venue and we got to know them. When the retired champion announced he was returning to compete one last time, the crowd was split with half of them cheering wholeheartedly for the beloved retired legend and others, primarily members of a biker gang, cheering for the new, much younger, up and comer who just happened to be a member of their motorcycle club.
In downtown Hamilton there was a small, private, foundry called McCoy Industries who primarily manufactured barbells and dumbbells and were always corporate sponsors of the competitive bodybuilding events and routinely had lobby displays and spokespersons marketing their products and offering competition specials to anyone wishing to buy display items and save them the trouble of returning them to their warehouse. The competition between the retired multi-year champion and the tough new biker dude became the event of the day. At the end of the competition, and having just won his event and regained his belt and title, everyone's hero was out at his table signing autographs and selling his photos and books. I'm recalling this was a matinee and the finale of a multi-day event. The lobby was packed with patrons and competitors alike purchasing bargains from the various vendors. Seemingly no one heard or noticed anything out of the ordinary but when the crowds dispersed the FOH manager discovered the murder scene on the ground level of the lobby and directly in front of the passenger elevator. Some one had acquired a barbell from the McCoy Foundries display, removed the locking collar and weights from one end, rotated the barbell into a vertical orientation and driven the unweighted end down and through the skull of the elder competitor smashing a hole through his skull and leaving his award winning body to die.
More than enough said. Not a good way to end a matinee, a competition or a life.
Let me be clear: I'm not against bodybuilders, motorcyclists or even theater consultants.
The murder scene was in the lobby of the Hamilton Place Great Hall in the latter half of the seventies. The event where I had to hang around 'til roughly 2:00 a.m. waiting for a competitor to manage to urinate in an official's steroid testing cup was more than a decade later in Hamilton's Theater Aquarius in the very early 90's.
At some point I'll post further on the 'joys' of lighting a bodybuilding competition and some of the blatant lies I was told.
No one will die in that post, I promise.
Edit: I'd misspelled finale.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard

 

[TNasty]

No one will die in that post, I promise.

I'll hold you to that promise, Ron. lol.

I totally see where you're coming from with comparing them to "dance moms", not aware of the complexity in technical work, and typically make odd requests that even if you'd like to tend to, you just don't have the time or equipment to do so. I guess that goes for any competitive deal- people want everything possible for their own pleasure (either their kid's dance looking better than it really is, or a body builder wanting a dramatic entrance through a wall of blue colored fog with strobing lights complete with Sirrius by the Alan Parsons Project playing synced up to followspots doing a well executed figure eight).

 

[TimMc]

I work in civic, municipal and privately owned facilities so some of my comments may not quite fit your situation. I also manage the largest regional audio/lighting shop in our region and deal with clients that range from profession producers to the unquestionably clueless. Apply the grain of salt as needed...

All venue rentals come with some kind of rules and limitations. At our PAC/convention center a lessee MUST put up a deposit, use the venue's ticketing service if the event requires city staff or IATSE stage hands, and the City must be listed as an additional named insured on the lessee's liability policy (certificate of insurance must be returned with signed contract and deposit). To say the City has learned the hard way would be understating the last 47 years of experience.

I have a fairly low opinion of dance competitions to start with - they are about separating parents from their money without providing any genuine value to the kids (IMHO, and unlike the dance studios that actually teach the students) - they never want supervision and certainly want to minimize all expenses. It's 100% monetary and 0% art.

Much of this is about what the school board or site administrators are comfortable with as teachers and students have very little or no input into policy or enforcement of policy. If the school superintendent is comfortable with letting lessees damage property there isn't much you can do about it. Likewise if the school principal has better things to do than enforce any requirements for in-house staffing you're pretty much S.O.L. Most schools would rather trust the 'take the money and run' dance competition staff word for things than trust teachers or especially students.

Until your school experiences some kind of catastrophic incident (personal injury, dramatic damages or financial losses) your situation isn't likely to change. I'd think the school board's lawyers would be all over any rental agreements to minimize the district/school/employee liability but it's possible they're unaware or that the school board has made a conscious decision to maximize outside revenues and simply look the other way. See the first sentence of this paragraph. When the inevitable Bad Thing does happen the usual school response is to remove the "I told you so" school personnel and then simply stop renting out the facility; it will remain that way until the institutional memory becomes institutional amnesia.

My dad was a lawyer and I know the way to fix the problems the original post describes must be contractually dealt with far above his/her level. The reality is the school board owns or manages the property and they'll do that in whatever manner they choose. I wish I could be more optimistic but my experience from being student dealing with outside rentals of our auditorium all the way to the current day give me no reason to do so.

/cynicism

 

[JJBerman]

The Performing Arts Center I work at part time has a decent list of rules that we usually abide by. There will always be some exceptions. Attached is the Policies, Application, and Fee Schedule for what we have. All information is publicly accessible from the School Districts website, I just took the time to black out everything that could directly point back to the district as a precaution. If you want to know what school district this is for send me a PM. The policies are a project of mine to update as they are 10 years old.

 

[TNasty]

Luckily, the group was actually pretty nice to work with this weekend (I can breath much easier now). They brought their own PA system, and only needed to raise and lower the same wash for each performance, so I gave them a submaster (sadly I had to write over one of my cool blinky flashy effect cues for things like rock bands).

Little did I know at the time, my friend and I were talking with the CEO of the company while we were there yesterday. Real nice guy, talked about equipment for a while, and he also offered us in on getting some equipment from this Chinese company (who makes the circuit boards and other electronics for Martin) that they buy from every summer. Everybody there was really quite nice to work with, to be honest.

Anyways, what other bits of advice does anybody have? I'd love to hear it, even if it isn't applicable to school venues- just educate me (and hopefully other members too) so we don't have to learn the hard way.