Renting a Professional Set

[Ryan Albrecht]

Hello all

I am in the process of securing a full professional set for our upcoming production of Shrek. I've never rented a set before, so I'm looking for some tips/pointers to help make the process smoother.

What have you all learned? Or what did you wish you'd known before?

Thanks

 

[Footer]

I used to work for a rep house that built shows to rent or rented shows we didn't want to build (Music Theatre of Wichita and Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma). We usually rented from other musical theatre rep houses like Gateway Playhouse. Occasionally we would pick up an old touring set or broadway set from Network Tours or something like that.

Few pointers...
-See if the company can send someone to call the load in who knows the set... this will save you a ton of man hours
-Get all drawings a few weeks out and see what you will need to do about size issues. We usualy had to change trims and portal width drastically depending on what size the theatre was built for.
-Are the drops with the set big enough/too big? What can you do about that?
-Are there any electrics that need to be dealt with (wireless DMX recievers, batteries, etc)
-How many trucks? How many dead cases do you need to store?
-How heavy is the scenery? Will your rigging support it?
-What is the lineset schedule of the orignal design and can your fly system deal with that?
-Any special rigging?
-How much wing space do you need and do you have it?
-Are there soft goods that are not included that you don't already have (fullstage black, scrims, etc)
-Do they send it with all hardware?
-Do they send it with all rigging? Its common for companies to not include trim chain or even rigging packages in general due to liability.
-How many days do you have the set before it loads in? We always tried to get it a week before load in so we could lay it out in our convention hall space and figure out any issues there.
-Does it have to screw into the deck? Can you do that in your venue?
-Do you need pig iron for counterweight that is not included?

There are a host of other questions.... but theres a start.

 

[Van]

I used to work for a rep house that built shows to rent or rented shows we didn't want to build (Music Theatre of Wichita and Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma).

Did I know you worked at Lyric ? Did you work With Chris Harrod while he was there?


Oh, OP, What Kyle said is GOLD. It may look expensive, bringing-in a technician from the rental house but trust us it will save you TONS on the back-end.

 

[bobgaggle]

Ah rental sets. See if you can get in contact with the last company that rented the set. Ask how its held up. I'm not going to name names, but I once got a set that needed about 150 man hours of paint to get it back to presentation quality. This thing was trashed. Don't trust the photos the rental company sends you. They were taken when the set was new 20 years ago.

Second, add contingency time. Had a nightmare renting another set once. The trailer axle broke down on the way to deliver, and the trailer sat on the side of the road for 2 days before some other company came and hand loaded everything into a new trailer. Great, except no one seemed to notice the gaping hole in the roof of said trailer, and of course it rained for the next day of driving. We got a moldy wet set. I know this is a fluke occurrence, but if you can build some breathing room into your schedule it may save you a lot of stress...

 

[firewater88]

I have rented sets many times for many different areas. The most we do business with is from Music Theatre Wichita, some nice stuff there! I will be getting Troika's old Annie set in the next month. Kyle gave you quite a few pointers, all valid. We are a bigger house than MTW and we have to scale down in the space or just cut items, like the hard portals. Do the leg work before the set comes and get everything nailed down. Definitely ask for a tech to come out, will save a ton of headache on the in and the out- he should help load the truck like it should be too. Best part? When the show is over, the set is on a truck and not sitting in your shop!