Hello there!
Long time reader. First post and it's a big one.
I work in a small community theatre, mainly on the lighting side of the house as that's where most of my fairly limited experience is. However, I've been asked to help advise the group on how best to approach the complete replacement of the stage and lighting rigging... Talk about the blind leading the blind. As always, the main constraint will be cost.
We are lucky enough to have builders/mechanics/metal workers/riggers/electricians/etc available to us and we can contract in for some work. However, if we were to ask any of these groups to 'build us a stage', whilst I've no doubt they'll do a good job structurally, there is a lot of theatre specific requirements that they wont be aware of unless we are very specific in what we want. Of course, we want to make the most of this unique opportunity to rebuild the stage, proscenium and overhead rig in a way that'll be flexible and serve us well for many years to come.
So, I'm looking for any advice you could share from two different angles:
Please, be gentle with me. I see from other amazing posts (like this) that some of you are already working on much bigger projects, so perhaps there is some wisdom you wouldn't mind sharing.
Thank you in advance,
Lee
Long time reader. First post and it's a big one.
I work in a small community theatre, mainly on the lighting side of the house as that's where most of my fairly limited experience is. However, I've been asked to help advise the group on how best to approach the complete replacement of the stage and lighting rigging... Talk about the blind leading the blind. As always, the main constraint will be cost.
We are lucky enough to have builders/mechanics/metal workers/riggers/electricians/etc available to us and we can contract in for some work. However, if we were to ask any of these groups to 'build us a stage', whilst I've no doubt they'll do a good job structurally, there is a lot of theatre specific requirements that they wont be aware of unless we are very specific in what we want. Of course, we want to make the most of this unique opportunity to rebuild the stage, proscenium and overhead rig in a way that'll be flexible and serve us well for many years to come.
So, I'm looking for any advice you could share from two different angles:
- Can you recommend a business who could either: a) Build us a theatre! or b) Advise us / produce a plan?
In many ways this would be my preference for obvious reasons. It would be best to have an experienced company lead us on this. However, we're probably working to a budget of 10k max. I fear consultation fees could reach this alone!
- Can you provide any pointers / experience that'll help us to build our own plan?
As mentioned, our budget is modest (possibly around 10k) but we have a lot of skilled people with the right equipment available to us. We'd need to provide a comprehensive list of requirements and/or design including many specifics.
My main concerns right now are:- deciding how we'd like the stage constructed, to be permanent but flexible & easy to maintain
- we need a new, supported frame to rig our lighting & scenery bars from - this would have to span fair distances (13m~), hold quite a lot of weight and still not be too intrusive in either floor footprint or as an eyesore!
Please, be gentle with me. I see from other amazing posts (like this) that some of you are already working on much bigger projects, so perhaps there is some wisdom you wouldn't mind sharing.
Thank you in advance,
Lee