Of course the theater is expecting whatever is put in to stay in, and if you rent cable, well, once the cable goes back to the rental shop everything is useless again.
Of course, there is really no possible way to make this work on a 7 grand budget and be decent. By that I mean doing a proper install with the dimmers wherever they go and proper cable running to the positions. 7 grand would buy the cable, but not much else. (As I said before, copper is insanely expensive now)
A minimum of 36 dimmers (40 by 30
stage, I'd say 36 dimmers a minimum, especially once 3 of them go over for
house lights) would run you somewhere around 3 or 4 grand, depending on the company.
A non-computer
console (2 scene
preset) for 36 channels would probably run you another 1500.
One Source4 is around $200. A
360Q 6x9 is around $175. A PAR64 is around $65. Lamps are around $15 to $25 each. An
R40 3
cell 6
foot cyc light (which is decent but not great) is around $290 each. A nicer
zip strip, 3
ckt, 6'6" long is around $730.
So, 7,000 budget, well, if you pull that off and make it look good, and make it safe, I congratulate you.
What I would suggest is to put in a temporary
system now, and have the theater save up until they can afford an actual lighting
system.
I'd look at getting three small NSI dimmers, 4 channels each, 1.2kw max (around $360 each) which you can just
plug into the wall. Go to home depot and get some 12/3 SO cable. Put one
dimmer FOH and one
dimmer on each of your electrics. Run your home depot cable from some outlets to the dimmers for
power.
Light wise, get 12
PAR 64s with 1000
watt WFL lamps in them. For control get a basic 2 scene
preset console, which should run you around $300. You'll need to get some 3 pin
XLR cable to connect your
console to your dimmers as well. That comes to around $2580, plus however much cable you get from home depot, and the
XLR cable.
Save the rest of your budget and wait for the theater to get some money, then
purchase a
system. When you
purchase your large
system, you'll already have 12
PAR 64s, which are always useful, and some extra satellite dimmers, which are also always useful.
The reason I suggest this is because I have seen too many people, schools and theaters get a small budget and
purchase as much second-rate equipment they can with it. Instead of purchasing just enough to get buy and waiting until they have the budget to
purchase what they need, they immediately go and
purchase a
system which WON'T do what they need, and waist their entire budget on it.
IMO, it's better to just get by now and get the
system that you want when you have the $50,000 to $100,000 later to spend on it.
Good luck!
Zac Spitzer