What kind of *&#*#*$(#*@#&@^# IDEA IS THAT
Seconded.
I'm all for doing interesting things, taking a show and flipping it on its head, approaching something from a completely new angle, making people stop and think about their most basic motivations. However, it needs to be right for the show, it needs to fit, and above all it needs to work.
You say its a normal
venue that your pretending is a black box, so I presume that means its a
proscenium space?
From a lighting standpoint, well, if you can
point your
FOH pipe down you have top light I guess and if you
fly in your
first electric you can get
face light. But thats about it, and odds are there is no way to make this look anything but bad.
From a sound standpoint, well, if you have some other speakers that you can
throw up to work, yea, whatever.
My suggestion would be to turn on the works and the
house lights, give them a
boom box and walk away. It just sounds really stupid.
</bitterness>
If you feel so inclined to do it, well, there's no way to make it interesting or cool, because theaters are hard wired with some basic concepts, mainly that people sit in the seats and watch the people above them on
stage. Electrics, cable runs, its all set up for this. Also, look into fire
egress codes.
Lighting wise, just use the
FOH pipe to get down light, ends of it can do some pipe end/high side business, and
fly in the 1st
electric and get some
face light. It won't look good, but it shouldn't look horrible.
From a sound standpoint, I hope you have some other speakers and amps and just set them up at the
edge of the
stage for the audience. Kinda like how you'd set up monitors.
Where would you run the show from? The booth, which is now on the upstage wall, or would you want to try and run all your cables some other way and run from the back of the
stage, now the back of the
house?
But, unless their paying you, I'd say walk away from it. It doesn't sound like it is worth the headache, honestly.
EDIT: I'm of course ignoring all the
practical issues of the actors attempting to act in the
house, and how no one in the audience past the first row will be able to see what is going on. Section it, the sight lines will suck.