First, I have to mention the
SM console from GDS. I saw this at
USITT this year and it's SO INCREDIBLY COOL. Unfortunately, it's likely out of many budget ranges, and I'm not sure how it'd be to actually work with it, but it's a unique idea. ACT is their North American distributor.
But back to reality. SM consoles traditionally consist of a large wooden
desk with a shelf for a calling script and storage areas inside the
desk. Then a normal 12-16U rack gets placed on top of the
desk that contains everything you need. What I tend to see most commonly in the rack is a 4-channel
Clear Com remote station, a 1U
Littlite Raklite, an AMS-1025 2ch
monitor (one for band and one for voice), an MBT PC-800
switch unit (or something else) for triggering
cue lights, and 4 or so monitors for various
stage shots. I agree that trying to go wireless is a bad idea, and running cable isn't as difficult as you might think. For a more engineered solution, you can have a custom cable made that includes 4 channels of comm, video, a program feed, SM announce out, and whatever else you need, then you can run a
power cable alongside it. However, it would be cheaper and more future-proof if you just bundle together a 9PR mult, an
Ethernet line, and a
power line, then install a multitail, an RJ-45 input, and a male
panel-mount edison into the back of the rack.
I've seen some theatres custom order or buy off-the-shelf a more engineered solution, and while this works, you need to be careful. One
theatre I work with went all out and had a custom cable built for their SM rack, along with a custom rack back panel that included outputs for everything coming out of the mult. However, since the panel is built to
cover the entire rack, as soon as they wanted a second audio feed running into the rack, the only solution was to cut a hole in the expensive panel to get new cable inside the rack.
I've attached a rack drawing of a fairly standard SM rack. Hope this helps.