I'm with you all the way. In my school, the walls surrounding the procenium are already painted dark blue (school color) but the front of the
apron was stark white for some reason. My director got it painted the same blue and the whole
stage picture changed dramatically. Just by painting that small strip of wall, the whole space looked so much better.
I think there will be an equally dramatic
shift in our space if we paint the walls surrounding the
proscenium. The structure of the
auditorium house around the
apron is ideal for painting it a different color than the actual
house walls. There is a very defined
line where the walls jut inward and then back outward. This isn't very
clear in the photo but if you look at the extreme left and right of the photo you see that the walls jut inward. There is also an old Front of
House beam that creates a very defined
break in the ceiling between the
apron and the rest of the
house. I will take and post a couple more photos later tonight.
But as for painting the walls black, I'm not so sure admin will go for it. From the looks of it, you have a multi-purpose space rather than an actual
theatre so it might be better to convince admin to paint it a school color, preferably the darker of the two, and assuming you have good color choices (you don't have colors of yellow and pink right?)
We do have a multi-purpose space, it is a high school
auditorium. It is primarily used for an annual musical, an annual
play (starting this year), and two annual dance recitals. It is also used for band/
orchestra/choral concerts, meetings, awards ceremonies, and as a rehearsal space for field band. Our school colors are purple and white so if we were not going to go with black we would have to go with a fairly dark purple. You can't see in the photo I posted but the grand curtain and grand
teaser are actually purple, the rest of the
stage curtains are black.
I think the only thing that you really want to paint is the
stage itself. The walls and the front of the
stage and the ceiling don't need to change. Look at most theatres, the walls are whatever color they are, and it is generally not black. If you have issues with light on the walls they you should
play with your
shutter cuts as this can be avoided.
I disagree, if we are going to paint the
stage floor we absolutely need to continue it down the stairs on each side of the
apron, and if we don't continue it across the front
edge of the
stage it would look very strange. The primary reason we want to paint the
apron surround is that we rely very heavily on the
apron for all of the productions we do. Without the
apron the
stage depth is typically not adequate, especially if we need to use any of the upstage space for a lit
backdrop. Because we rely on the
apron so much (and because we have no electrical positions over or on either side of the
apron) we typically set up free standing booms on either side of the
apron so that we may employ side lighting or mimic the
pipe ends on the rest of the
stage electrics. There is no way to
shutter these instruments to keep them off the walls at either side of the
apron. As far as the Front of
House instruments go I am sure that we will have less
spill on the walls and ceiling once the
stage floor isn't reflecting the light all over the place.
In terms of the floor, you will never convince the school that it should be done. It is an
auditorium before it is a
theatre, and it has to look nice. I would suggest taking the route of maybe seeing if they will allow you to
lay masonite over the
stage floor which you then can paint however you like. To this end, you can argue that it will protect the nice finish of the floor.
At this
point we already have a school employee in charge of school facilities relatively on board with the idea of painting the floor. This is not a new floor and it is not in great shape. The floor is actually partially sanded right now because the school was planning to re-seal it. We are simply proposing that we not go the route of re-sealing it but rather just finish sanding it down and paint it. Even if the space is an
auditorium before it is a theater we aren't proposing something that is going to make it look bad for concerts or awards ceremonies, we are proposing something that will draw the eye better to what is happening on
stage. Again I will post a few more photos to illustrate the things I've mentioned here.