MsTodal I find your question a
bit hard to answer because I am not sure of the
role you will be filling in the
theatre. Will you be the TD? Or will you just be lighting and sound?
There a whole lot of things to learn depending on what you are doing and how the
theatre was built.
For instance are the lighting bars over the
stage fixed or can they be lowered?
If they can be lowered how winches or a counterweighted fly
system. If the later then you might need to look training on
fly tower work.
Apart from flying there shouldn't much new for your to learn. The rest will be based on your
current knowledge such as where are the audio patch panels and /or places to
plug in the microphones. Things like that. The same with connectors for foldback speakers
etc. The same with lighting how you connect the lights to the
dimmer ie
patch panel or is it hardwired one
dimmer to one
outlet .
Do you have ladders or is there a Genie so you might need to do a course on?
There's heaps of little things where are the light switches for the
stage? Do you have control for the lights in the
auditorium etc?
One thing you might have to get use to is having legs and
border curtains and how to adjust / put up and take down.
Since I started this post I saw you have made a new one so ignore the first question.
If you are worried about
safety then find things like where the extinguishers are.
If this is for a High School then there should be a Health and
Safety person that should be able to help you indentify the risks in the building.
If you haven't already you should talk to the management and find out what you are responsible for as far as
safety goes.
Who are writing the rules what the students are allowed to do/ not do? Eg Are there catwalks - when can a student go up there
etc.
Is this
theatre actually finished construction yet? If it is due to open in the start of the new schol year I would try and see if you can start working there this summer just to familarise your self with the place. Also you can setup procedures on how things are to be done. Eg
Play with the sound
system and find the best levels ( of course with it empty it won't be perferct) but it should give you some idea of the sound quality and volume.
Play with the
projector system. Setup some lighting states on submasters on the board. Start writing little manuals like a teacher one where the light
switch controls are ? How to connect to the video
projector from the
stage if this is possible.
Another thing I would do, is get hold of the Audio engineers design
manual for the
theatre . Then go through it and make sure everything works like they said it would. I was one of the first techs in a new school
theatre a couple of years ago and found the installation wasn't complete. The
manual would say one thing but the opposite was true. Wiring to take sound to one of the attached classes hadn't being attached to the
socket in the
patch panel.
There were video leads to the
stage that hadn't even being connected to their
patch panel etc.
So as you see there are lots of things to do but a lot of stuff you will know already and just apply it to the new space. But if there is a
fly tower then you will need a course to run it.
Why don't you put up a list of things you think you need to learn / take care of then we can comment on any you may have missed.