# The bad stuff thats been goin down...



## Source4Spike (Jun 1, 2004)

Last week before our Spring Dance Concert, I left my backpack in the house while I worked on some last minute details (like our screwed up cyc lights). About 20 minutes before the house opened, I remembered my backpack, and went to move into the booth. It was gone. I asked around and found out that it had been moved across the house by the Dance Director. By now, the house had just been opened, so I went to were they said she put it, and it was gone.

After the show I spent a half hour looking for my backpack, and couldnt find it anywhere. It pisses me off that someone would do this. The backpack contained two wrenches (a C-Wrench, and an Altman), two schoolbooks, a lighting design book, and all my schoolwork from the past year. Normally I would care about dissapearing schoolwork, but finals ARE coming up VERY soon.

So I came to school today very disgruntled about my missing (stolen!) backpack. Now think, what could be worse then not having the comforting security that your theatre is safe from thievery? What I discovered when I got to school gave me a perfect answer:

Over this past weekend, some dipsh!t broke into the Prop Bin that sits next to our theatre. Its contents comprised mostly costumes, but also many props, and tech stuff (A few Pars, Fresnals and S4s, some old Striplights, a few curtains, and 5 miniMacs, which we never use because of their crapiness, but which are still valuable). Anyway, It was lit on fire. Everything came out burnt or (in the case of the lighting instruments) greatly deformed. The way the damage is done, it seems that the fire was started in either the middle or the back of the bin. Our TD thinks it was probably some crackheads that were responsable.

Luckily, we do have insurance, so this incident may not be that bad in the long run, because at least we will get new stuff, but it still is a major inconvenience, especially because next week we have our year-end Gala, which is basically a superfancy talent show, where 5000 dollar scholorships are awarded. For this, everyone does their best, including Tech. Fortunately, the majority of our Pars and Source 4s were rigged on stage from last week's dance concert, but we lost nearly all our fresnals, and all the rest of our S4s and Pars. We also lost almost all our cable, which is going to mean that we will be forced to rent tons of cable for next week.

Sucks for us eh?

-Nick


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## zac850 (Jun 1, 2004)

that really does suck. 

Hearing that story just got me worried about my school's stuff. We have our booth, and I always take the ladder away when i'm not using it, however all of our cable and our dimmers is down in a back room that is always open. I would be surprised if anyone wanted to steel our cable, but as a joke.....

the problem is I don't have any better place to put the cable, as the booth is already packed and we don't have our shed built yet...


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## rapscaLLion (Jun 1, 2004)

Indeed.

We never experianced a loss like that as far as I know,
all though our office was burnt to a crisp a few years 
back.... Anyway, we don't have anything of value in
our auditorium, everything is WAY to old to be worth
much. Except maybe the new source fours, which are
too heavy and innaccesable to make off with and the
dimmer pack which isn't going anywhere without a
bulldozer. I think the dimmer pack is (besides the
brand new source fours) the newest/best piece of
equipment... some teacher years ago tried to build
his own dimmer pack to save the school some money,
got himself fired over it but it got the administration's
attention and we got a nice new dimmer pack 

Anyway, so that's a long way of saying we have little
danger of ppl stealing our stuff, but we still have our share
of troubles. One show we did someone got the brilliant idea
of spraying pepper spray into the air in the backstage
area during tech run. Evacuation followed and we were 
not allowed to rehearse any more till the day of. Then the
big day comes and during our second performance in one day
the fruitcakes spray stuff again, this time in the house. 
Evacuate again... We never caught the bastards that did
it, which pisses me off. And we never found out
what it was they sprayed, the admins said it was pepper
spray but I'm not so sure. Symptems where eyes watery
but not painful, tightness in the chest, nose running a
marathon and coughing ranging from mild to severe.
It also smelled like perfume... but not quite. So all our
shows now live in fear of crap like that happenning.
Any ideas?


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## Source4Spike (Jun 2, 2004)

How did he get fired over a building himself a dimmer pack? Did they decide he'd gone loony or something?
-Nick


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## Mayhem (Jun 2, 2004)

The sad reality is that nothing is safe or sacred anymore. If it is unlocked, unattended or not bolted down it will most probably walk. Unfortunately, you now have to assume that this is the case.

The university that I work for is always sending out security bullitens due to theft or suspicious persons/activities being reported. In many cases, people are having personal items stolen from their offices.

Whilst some of the items you refer to are old or worthless, they are (in many cases) still functional and their worth may not be recognised until you go to use them. As Nick has pointed out, the inconvenience is often worse than the actual loss.

Cables - now that is a problem as most of us do not have enough to begin with, let alone after some knobber has torched them.

Take home message – secure it as best you can and/or don’t let it out of your sight.


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## Radman (Jun 3, 2004)

Hmm, insurance... Wouldn't it be dreadful if the pos they call a light board a MY school went, erm, "missing" for a while...


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## Source4Spike (Jun 3, 2004)

Its a real shame our colortran board didnt get left in the bin last week...
-Nick


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## zac850 (Jun 3, 2004)

Radman said:


> Hmm, insurance... Wouldn't it be dreadful if the pos they call a light board a MY school went, erm, "missing" for a while...



yea, and wouldn't it be bad if they made insurance fraud illigal.....? oh... wait....


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## rapscaLLion (Jun 4, 2004)

He built a dimmer pack and was using it in the school's auditorium around students. Sounds a bit unsafe to me...


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## __WWW__ (Jun 13, 2004)

last year during our production of my fair Lady we had a headset stolen and some wallets from the dressing room and a cd player. this year we only had a mp3 player stolen, and i dont think it was really stolen, i think the kid just lost it.


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## ccfan213 (Jun 24, 2004)

our theatre is brand new so nothing has been stolen yet, but one of the school's staff members took almost all our wires before we even knew we had them, so for months i was brining in tons of stuff from home. now that we have them back, we keep them and everything locked in storage closets behind our booth. the best suggestion is to just keep things either locked up if possible, and u can usually convince the theatre teacher to give u space in their classroom if you need it, or put it in a high traffic area so a teacher will see someone go in to steal stuff


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## 3D (Jul 21, 2004)

you need to start locking up insturments and valuables up in a safe place!!!

3D (Derek D. Deiterman)


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