# Never let a school design a theatre... pt. 2



## Charc

I didn't want to hijack the other thread, so I thought I'd create my own.

So I've been supplementing my theatre education with Controlbooth and the internet. I was going over some ideas for an upcoming show and decided to poke around the theatre to get a better look at our (under used) fly system. Well when I did research on fly systems I had this sinking feeling our fly system wasn't a fly system. My poking around confirmed this. We have a "hanging system". So basically when the theatre got renovated, this was a few years ago, before my time, they didn't hire a theatre consultant. They had some alumni that said "I'm good at this stuff" or something. Apparently the original plans were just upright whack. Luckily the theatre dept. head was able to get some say when some new guy came to the project, but some things remained. Among these, the hanging system. So instead of a traditional counterweighted fly system, we have a bunch of winches on BSR. Major problems with these winches: 1. They are not counterweighted, so weight is a pain. 2. They are honestly slower than a crawl. I don't know how I can accent this. I'm talking a solid 3 minute of hardcore winching to bring something in. 3. When going up, they use one of those systems with the teeth and a metal "catch" that will stop the pipe from dropping should it fail. Actually come to think of it, the catch is the only thing stopping it from falling. anyways, this is all housed internally, and impossible to stop from CLANKING REALLY REALLY LOUDLY KIND OF LIKE WHY I'M WRITING IN CAPS AND CAN YOU IMAGINE THIS NOISE FOR 3 MINUTES WHILE YOU ARE BREAKING A SWEAT FROM USING THE GODAWFUL WINCH? 4. It wasn't "double purchased" which apparently means we can only used 1/2 of our fly tower (correct terminology?). So we have only have a 5-6 foot flat in the air, as opposed to a 12 foot flat. 

According those I've talked with "It's useless". Really it's a shame. It means we can't fly anything. Though we flew something last year. But it wasn't counterweighted, and it was pretty big. I am a skinny guy. Holding that rope myself, I would get dragged forward last year, so we had to have 2 people fly it out, and it was jerky, and terrible, as it was rigging on some hooks on the wall. Just not good.

So on top of that a lot of things in the theatre don't make sense. Like how we don't have house-lights. We have pars in the house... Though to my GREAT surprise today I noticed house-lights hung on the balcony. Granted they aren't hooked up yet, nor do we have any lights for the main part of the house, but its a start. So on top of that I'm annoyed with our cats. They built it so it can _just_ clip your head in 4 spots. You can imagine how many times I run up there, and coincidentally how many times you'll random hear curses coming from the ceiling. I also don't like that the theatre used to be a church, and we still have the pews.

So ontop of that, a lot of stuff just plain doesn't make sense. They way a lot of stuff is set up, and how the old stuff is disconnected. I've noticed a bunch of ports that look like they could be IC ports, but some have tape on them, and I'm worried they are DMX512, and I don't wanna touch 'em. The theatre is just plain weird all over. The basement especially is crazy. It's like a labyrinth, the building has seen so many transitions. We do have 4 IC ports scattered around there though...

I'm saddened that there isn't any way (apparently) to have a trap door or elevator in our stage floor, apparently it was designed in a weird way. Though I found what appears to be an old heating grate that leads to the crawl space, and I plan to investigate it in my next free time.

Another weird thing we have going on. Our catwalks / circuits were all renovated 3 years ago. Relatively new. I think we got our board and dimmers then, though I found a dead circuit. This is a new development. I spent an hour trying to trouble shoot what was going on before I realized the circuit was dead. I've been meaning to ask one of the maintenance guys for a key to the dimmer room, but I haven't had the chance. I might e-mail him tonight about that, because it bugs me that we have a dead circuit... any thoughts on what to look for there?

Well I figured as long as I was complaining about my theatre (maybe this is better for the punching bag) I should post some pictures of it. These are old and from my phone, sorry.






P.S. No orchestra pit!

Post Post Script: And the booth! God, it's tiny, and just a box added to the house, blah. It gets so HOT in their during performances too.


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## soundlight

Ahh... I feel a rant coming, one that has been posted many times here before.

1) You have a Strand 300 series. I had the Lightronics "Crapbox II Pro S.O.L."

2) You have catwalks. I had a hmm...how should I put it...shakey at best "ladder" to get to the FOH position.

3) You at least have winches. Our electrics were fixed pipes at 17', our drapes (torn in some places) were fixed, our grand drape was fixed (at 3" of the deck, mind you, because the installer said that it "would stretch over time" - bullshit.)

4) You have a balcony. We just had about 500 seats in one big rectangular box with a stage on one side of it, no proscenium, no balcony, etc.

5) You have dimmable fixtures as house lights. Ours were fluorescent fixtures wired straight to breakers so that you would hear the "pop pop pop pop pop" as the house lights went out before the show.

I could go on forever...so much fun the "who's theater is the worst?" contest. I'm sure that there are plenty of other horror stories around here.


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## HandyMan

Dude, i feel your pain..my school's theatre isnt too bad off...except the frankenstine lightwall...and no phone system...and the sound is progressivly gettin better...just think of it like this...it can only get better...it helps a lil bit...and sometimes, it brings a huge laugh...but it makes ya feel better...


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## Edrick

I like how people are like well you had this and i had that so I was off worse, we have to remember that, that was also a different time . If your theater is 20+ years old obviosly you're going to have had, different things than what a theater was renovated just recently. 

So it's a bit like the I walked 6 miles both ways in snow, rain, sleet ect... Back then that was the standard, just as now riding the bus it the standard. 

Now if you're dealing with a system such as soundlight described in future time well then that would be a stinker and you'd have these people beat with bad theater.


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## Charc

soundlight said:


> Ahh... I feel a rant coming, one that has been posted many times here before.
> 1) You have a Strand 300 series. I had the Lightronics "Crapbox II Pro S.O.L."
> 2) You have catwalks. I had a hmm...how should I put it...shakey at best "ladder" to get to the FOH position.
> 3) You at least have winches. Our electrics were fixed pipes at 17', our drapes (torn in some places) were fixed, our grand drape was fixed (at 3" of the deck, mind you, because the installer said that it "would stretch over time" - bullshit.)
> 4) You have a balcony. We just had about 500 seats in one big rectangular box with a stage on one side of it, no proscenium, no balcony, etc.
> 5) You have dimmable fixtures as house lights. Ours were fluorescent fixtures wired straight to breakers so that you would hear the "pop pop pop pop pop" as the house lights went out before the show.
> I could go on forever...so much fun the "who's theater is the worst?" contest. I'm sure that there are plenty of other horror stories around here.



Funny you should mention fluoros as house lights... that's what they are installing


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## soundlight

AHHH!!! Floros for house lights are the _worst, worst, worst_ way to go. They can't set the right "mood" in the house for most theatre productions, they can't be dimmed without special ballast and dimmers, and they're just downright awful for house lights.

Make sure you get a switch in the booth to control them, and see if you can get them to make them dimmable with the proper ballasts and dimmers, if at all possible.


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## Edrick

That's one of the "good" things about here all the theater is incadecent lights. "good" in that they are dimmable, but are energy hogs. It takes more power to run the theater than it does to run our entire E Building (4 floors, all classrooms, heating, computers, ect..)

It would suck to be in CA though since they're trying to ban incadecent lights.


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## Van

At the Portland PCPA there is a strange theatre called the Winingstad < the Winnie> All of the electrics are on a similar winch system. The thought being that since electrics don't need to move during a show < ideally> why invest the money in a full counterweight system? One thing I might suggest is what they do at the Winnie . They have a modified angle grinder. It has a big socket on the spindle and all the winches have a bolt on them where the handle would mount. It speeds things up a ton. 
I can't imagine how a non-licensed non-qualified person was able to do work in a public building like your school, but man, thats a recipe for disaster. As far as My theatre sucks worse than yours..... Yeah I kinda agree with Rickblu There is a bit of, " Oh Yeah well I had to walk to school in chest deep snow, uphill, Both ways" Heck, I had a 12 scrimmer EDI pack with a 6 channel analogue board, but look at me now ! hehehehehe.
Just remember it could be worse. < I think>


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## Footer

You guys really need to go out and look at some professional theatres out there then start your complaining. I have worked in places that are converted churches, old warehouses (those are reallllllyyyyy fun), retired auto shops, old restraints/coffee bars (that the permanent light system consisted of 8 100' soca's, 24 2.4k dimmers, 12 1.2k dimmers, and 8 POS 600w elation DJ packs, and it happened to be a triangle of a space). You have electric winches, BE GLAD!, many schools are not installing counterweight systems due to safety concerns, so be glad you can fly anything at all. Also, you have a great console sitting up in your booth that is a wonderful training tool (speaking as one of the strand fanboys here). Also, nearly every catwalk has its own specific quark, usually involving sprinkler pipes of some kind. Be glad you have a theatre. Don't attack it, look at it as a place to make art and use it for its full potential. A painter can complain about his brushes all day long, but its the good painter that paints the best with the crappiest brush.


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## setmandj

I would just like to ad that the theatre that I am working in is a old tobacco barn... and I mean old... it was standing in the early 1800's. We have a cement floor, and electricity. The walls are still slatted and the roof leaks... We have been rained on, snowed on and have had to hand out blankets to our audiance. Be thankful you have heat and Air conditioning. 

The new facility that is in the local High school has no fly system very few lights and while there are towers for spots, no spots were ordered. Be thankful for what you have and work to improve it.


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## Edrick

I was gonna say well it can be worse but setmandj beat me, our old school that was just demolished at the start of this school year the "theater" was built in the 60s and guess when the last update to it was? the 60s. Had a huge electrical box that just sits on the floor 8 feet tall by 5 feet wide with big manual levers that you would move to dim lights, big warnings with do not touch sparks! and broom sticks attached to them to pair some of the dimmers. The curtains were old as anything all of it was winches and there was no catwalk just hard fixed lights up on the ceiling. The "control" booth was nothing but a small room with a window for a spot which smoked.

Ontop of that it rained in there so if you ever needed water effects well there ya go. 

Even older in the origional building 100 years old was another theater / auditorium with balcony seats and a big open space that you had to setup manual seats. Nothing like trying to hang a big projector screen by getting up on a huge ladder and tying it over the old curtains. The electrical system never was upgraded and you turned the lights on / off with a switch in the fuse pannel. Off to the right of the stage was the "media" storage wich consisted of vintage record players and an amp. The control booth in that was even smaller.

last years play was fun, we had rented lights maybe about 8 of them all on all the time except in scene changes no different lighting effects ect... The sound system which I had to operate was a bunch of hanging mics with really thin ancient xlr cabling run into a ancient sound mixer and amp hey if you wanted to listen to a radio station we could just turn the speakers up a bit and there ya go.


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## gafftaper

How about this for an "it could be worse" 

A professional road house theater not to far from where I work just did a $14 million remodel. Guess what. The roof leaks. The roof drainage system backs up into the fly system pit. There's another leak that drains into the orchestra pit, and good old drips in several other locations.

It's not just schools that screw these things up. It's the beauty of Minimum Bid Contractors.


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## jonhirsh

Sometimes quirks are the best learning experiences. 

I started in a theatre that had 3 S4's 5 2k Fresnels. I learned to be efficient with my inventory. 

Now I go to a school that has a very large inventory. And I am constantly designing professional shows with large moving light packages. But I don’t feel I could have learned to use the big stuff with out all the years of working with nothing.

Having to make due can some times help you over come your ego. And most of all it can help you learn to be innovative a key skill to getting hired again. 


The fact that I can go to other countries and work with what they have is a huge plus. I just did a show in Croatia where they couldn’t explain to me what they had where they had it. But I worked through it; sort of learning the language as I went along I was able to over come the obstacles in my way. If I hadn’t started with so few lights in my career I might have been nervous about the rig they provided. But using my experiences from past failures and past bad situations I was able to get through it and get great reviews. 

Schools don’t screw up there theaters. We just don’t use them sometimes the way they were built. It sounds like your pipes are only meant to be flown in for hanging and focus. Use it this way, stop designing flying scenery. And work with your space don’t fight it and make it work for you. 

Design for your space and what you have available to you. 

JH


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## Edrick

Just a little side thing instead of creating a new topic or brining up a old one. I walked into the theater today and who was there? None other than the Projector Company. They still had the old work order to install our projector and showed up, tracing all the lines figuring out whats going on and what not. But now they have to wait for approval to install the projector if the school decides it wants to spend the money. 

Funny how they just showed up though, they weren't even called in. Just one day hey lets go finish this work order


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## astrotechie

Rickblu said:


> Funny how they just showed up though, they weren't even called in. Just one day hey lets go finish this work order


Well that is the fact working on a governmental funded project. You have back orders and things that dont function right and other problems. Also there should be things that should be inter-changable but arent. Well that is one thing that I never get tired of wondering about when working in a governmental funded project.


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## achstechdirector

I feel for you all

We had 8 par 56's for 2years

we are now renting a theatre in Corinth, MS called the Coliseum. It was built in the 20's but has modern equipment. It also has the Strand 300 series console. It is a dream.

sorry "i don't liketo brag"


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## avkid

achstechdirector said:


> I feel for you all
> We had 8 par 56's for 2years
> we are now renting a theatre in Corinth, MS called the Coliseum.


Cinema Treasures Profile:
http://cinematreasures.org/theater/8806/


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## sloop

while I won't go into details, let me say winches with latch catches are not safe, tie the handles so they can't move when not being used. You should have worm drive winches that do not rely on spindle locks.


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## DaveySimps

Some very good points have beed brought up. I agree that not having a lot forces you to be creative and resourceful, an invaluable tool in our industry.

I opened a new $12M space a few years ago, and we had roof leaks for 3 years before we took them to court to do the job right. We also had deamons in our lighting system that gave us endless problems for 2 1/2 years, turns our running CAT 5 with high voltage cable to a control node for 300' is a bad idea. Took the lighting company that long to find something that should have been discovered before commissioning of the system. I have heard of countless other new facilities with other bad luck with low bid contractors.

I could not agree more about building to suit your theatre. This is a pet peeve of mine from designers and directors. There are just some things you can't do in many spaces, with out a remodel or HUGE budget.

~Dave


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## avkid

DaveySimps said:


> we had roof leaks for 3 years before we took them to court to do the job right.


The contractor that put on our theatre's horrible roof fled the state and the lawsuit.


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## Charc

The company that did the Electrics install at a local community theatre went belly-up shortly after the terrible install. This probably woulda been a god job for JD, and I'm sure someone much more reputable; unless JD shows up to work drunk that is?


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## Spikesgirl

You are all scaring me - AV, your roofing contractor ended up iin California and installed our roof. We had one major rainstorm and it leaked all over our flats on stage - oh, and the third electric... and the hub in the office.

The community theater I'm attached to now is starting to take bids for a new black box - still in the fesibility stage, but what would you abosultely recommend as specific areas to be doubly cautious in? Beside roofing, that's a no brainer now - the TD and I are of the opinion that it would be nice to bring the pros theater up to code first before starting a new project like this - we're still waiting for the next stage of our sound system install. 

What say you, more experience new theater folks?

Char5lie

P.S. Charlie, you are right about not letting a school design a theater- they put a hotel lighting patch system in our theater that we had to struggle with for nearly 20 years before we could get rid of it. That was an odd experience...


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## avkid

Make sure that there is empty space in the data conduit, which should be at least 4" EMT.
You will always end up needing to run more wires, and it's much easier to get a fishtape through a half empty piece of conduit than a full one.
Make sure to watch the electricians and the neutrals.
You do not want the ground and neutral joined anywhere beside the service entrance or you will hear it in audio systems.
This is easy to test when the system is energized but before they sign off on the project.
All you need is a DMM and two probes, one in the neutral slot and one in the ground.
If you get more than about .5 volts you have a problem.


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## Spikesgirl

avkid said:


> Make sure that there is empty space in the data conduit, which should be at least 4" EMT.
> You will always end up needing to run more wires, and it's much easier to get a fishtape through a half empty piece of conduit than a full one.
> Make sure to watch the electricians and the neutrals.
> You do not want the ground and neutral joined anywhere beside the service entrance or you will hear it in audio systems.
> This is easy to test when the system is energized but before they sign off on the project.
> All you need is a DMM and two probes, one in the neutral slot and one in the ground.
> If you get more than about .5 volts you have a problem.



Husband is discovering the joy of a 'full' data conduit as I type this. He and the TD are running Cat5 cable this afternoon. I'm supposed to be research Oxford University Banners and 19th Century pin up girls. You notice where I am...

Char5lie


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## Logos

In the design process double check where they run the A/C and try to make sure the exits are in sensible places not in the middle of what will be the back wall of your favourite performance space.


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## museav

Two phrases to watch for "low, qualified bid" and "Value Engineering", both are good ideas gone bad.

"Low, qualified bid" means that the project is awarded to the "qualified" bidder with the lowest price. All sorts of potential problems here from 'low' meaning the bidder who cut the most corners in what they bid to how to define 'qualified' or even more difficult, how to prove a bidder is not qualified (just such an allegation often ends up with calls and letters from attorneys). Contractors need work to stay in business, some are very good and take the high road, but some play, or are forced to play just to stay in business, in the "how cheaply can we do it" mode in order to get work. In some cases, even for public bids, there may be other options that are acceptable alternative to "low, qualified bid" in order to get what are really 'best value' rather than 'low cost' bids (two envelope method/Brooks Act, allowances, etc.).

"Value Engineering" was intended to be just that, a way for the bidders and Contractors to offer alternates that could potentially increase the value of the work without increasing the cost or decrease the cost without decreasing the value. What it too often becomes is either "how can we cut costs" or "instead of what was designed, what can you do for this budget". A specific example on one project, a bidder recommended going from a four channel to a single channel production communication system. It may reduce the cost but how can anyone suggest it provides the same functionality and capability? Yet it appeared on the VE list (luckily we got it removed from consideration).

These types of issues are where having someone on your side who is familiar with the process as well as the systems can be beneficial. However, as I've too often experienced, in the end it doesn't matter what an end user or consultant says or recommends if the Owner accepts a lesser result. There is no practical way to overcome that.


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## Smurphy

Thank you all for making my theatre sound like a Broadway theatre. I guess it could always be worse, and some of you proved that 10 fold. But I really do hope it gets better.


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## Grommet

my highschool converted the 100 seat theater to a blackbox and added a 468 theater next to it.

the black box conversion was filling the house rake with cement,and replacing the lighting grid and giving us some risers platforms that are on carts but are too big to roll out of any of the doors.

the lighting grid is on one end of the box covering the same area as the old grid. they painted it all black and did not fix the broken house lights.

the 20 dimmers for this grid are in the same room with the 220 dimmers of the larger theater. 

Well what the contractors did not do was add a splitter to the dimmer racks to make the theater and black box separate.

so the DMX jack in the box did not work. we had to pull the light board from the theater down and run DMX from box to theater in order to make the box light up. 

it took us a bit to figure out which dimmers were which since they were labled 1-20 but with out the splitter it was really the "5th" electric of the theater.


so that is one of many issuses with lowest bidders and the seattle school district.

i have more to share if you like.


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## Soxred93

This is from my old school. Thank god I left that school after 8th grade (I left by choice, it was a combo middle/high school)...



Catwalk: Metal grate floor, so you can't kneel without cringing in pain.
All the lights except for the cyc were on the FOH. Don't even think about trying to light upstage.
First year I was there, it was an old 48 channel analog board. Channels 34 through 48 didn't work. We only had 33 channels we could use, which doesn't really matter when you only have 22 lights
Second year: We upgraded to a computer with Horizon. Still needed a DMX to analog converter, which broke regularly
Everything was fixed. Nothing could be flown
Entrance to the catwalk was on a thin metal ladder 35 feet up with no handles.
Instruments were 35 years old, at least 2 broke a night.
2 levels in the booth. Level 1 was where the sound person and director sat. Level 2 was 4 feet higher behind them. Total height? Maybe 6 feet. Couldn't stand up fully. Nor could you see downstang (which is where all the lights were)
House lights were fluorescents, which means cringes of pain from the audience when you turn them on.
Door to the booth was accessable from the seats, and it was locked with a padlock. That means that you couldn't lock it from inside, so kids would always "explore" into the booth.
Modification of earlier point: We had 1 fly. It's not easy when the set designer wants a prop, the director wants a different prop, and the light person wants some lights to light upstage.

Rant ahoy!


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## bdkdesigns

I had the fun opportunity to work with a mix between my Strand 520i which was nice this summer to go along with my Square D Resistance Dimmers. We are pretty sure that they were BTO or rebranded because Square D has no recollection of it ever existing. I was talking to my old undergrad advisor about it and he mentioned he had a similar one back when he was in high school and it was only 4 years old and Square D was clueless even then. The resistance dimmers were wired to floor pockets with the good old fashioned Stage Plugs .


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## mrtrudeau23

I feel the need to rant about the space I learned (more like dealt with) theatre in...
Starting onstage: no fly so everything was dead hung, no wings to speak of on either side of the stage, no shop to build anything in so all construction was done onstage, no changing areas, so the band and choir rooms across the hall served as dressing rooms/hang out areas for the cast. The stage dimensions themselves were approximately 40 feet deep by a wonderful 60ish feet across with a roof height of about 18-20 feet off the deck. The "proscenium arch" consisted of a lowered dry wall block across the top to basically cover the front valence and the first electric (at least they painted it black) and the black brick walls of the stage. Either side of the stage, a permanent set of steps ran onto the stage directly into the folds of the leg hiding a retracted main. Our main curtain is a blazing red-orange vinyl sheet which someone got splotches of yellow paint on near the center division. 
The house was what I like to call a gymatorium with three brick walls and a fourth retractable wall to make the actual gym bigger. No permanent seating, all floor chairs and four sections of moveable bleachers for the back. No pit; we had to build the pit walls out of band risers which were used during concerts. The ceiling was strewn with huge white acoustical panels that deadened echoing and didn't help with sound reinforcement as well as six retractable basketball hoops, three of which blocked house lights. One of these hoops was installed so that what would have been one FOH lighting bar was actually two bars.
The booth was a room about the size of a dorm room 12'x12' with a brick wall dividing it in half (sound side and light side) with two doors in it. The booth was so far away from the stage that there was a delay between the sound from the mains and the booth monitors which was never fixed properly.
Lighting system, at the time, was run by an ETC Mircovision FX with a serial number in the low 100's. I got this replaced by an Express 24/48 my senior year just before I left.  House had 60 dimmers total, 8 of which were house lights (8 sets of 3 Altman PAR56's scattered across the floor) and all of the dimmers were up in the air (no floor or wall pockets). All Altman lighting equipment which was probably one of the only good things of the space. The FOH position was focused with a large two person Genie lift (which didn't drive so I got to pull it everywhere) and the smaller Genie for onstage stuff which was constantly stolen by the janitors when I needed it (and never charged, of course).
I was constantly fighting with the athletic department about using the space and had to work around basketball and track practices each year.

Thanks for allowing me to rant...
So, after all that, I agree with you 100% that a school (or an inexperienced architect) should not be allowed to design a theatre. If I could find whoever did our theatre, well...


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## NickJones

Worst ever: 2 converted single story classrooms, the stage was just over 2m from the bottom of the stage to the roof, indents in the roof above it to hang fixtures on stupid angles, and 1 FOH (if you could call it that) bar at about 25 to the stage. 
Horrible.


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## Jinglish

My high school's theater isn't the worst, but it definitely has its issues. It started out as a high school commons with a stage, and they started turning the thing into a real theater several years ago. Last summer we finally got some permanent seating, and this summer they replaced our old house lighting (two PAR cans and a half-dozen gym-style fluorescents) with some dimmable fluorescents and wall sconces.

I don't think they hired a theater consultant during the initial renovations; for one, we got a ColorTran Innovator 24/48 board. >_< Our director told us that she told the contractor to put the FOH lighting bars (two of them) back at about twice the distance he was planning (twenty feet or so horizontally), but he didn't think the 360Q's would throw that far.  We got a Genie lift the summer before I started doing lighting, though, so I never had to deal with the ladder and cherry-picker my predecessors have told me a great deal about.

Our stage and and the equipment on it are probably the things that give me and my underlings the most problems. For one, there's no fly or winch system whatsoever; any hanging involves getting the Genie up on stage (not too hard, since there's a ramp behind the stage), although we can swap gels with an A-frame. That's not really a problem for us; the fact that we have to fasten our cyc to a rope strung under the ceiling and spend a great deal of time putting it up or taking it down is. Luckily, we don't take it down very much.

The dimming system, though... well, several of our 48 channels don't work properly. One is always on at 100%, and the rest of the misbehavors just don't work. About half of them are floor channels, though, so it's not _that_ big of a deal.

Finally, we have no booth. The sound and lighting boards are merely on desks in the back corner of the house, and some of the actors and makeup crew like to hang out there before shows and plug their iPods into the sound board. Needless to say, my crew and the sound guys don't really like listening to rap and/or having to shove people out of our way while we're working or just in need of some quiet time before the show, so it's a bit of a frustration. There's talk of giving us an actual booth next time they get a grant for renovation, though. I'm definitely going to keep in touch with my trainees after a graduate, and the woman who generally heads the renovation planning will actually listen to us, so maybe we can get an Ion and some fader wings too...


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## derekleffew

Jinglish said:


> ... The dimming system, though... well, several of our 48 channels don't work properly. One is always on at 100%, and the rest of the misbehavors just don't work. About half of them are floor channels, though, so it's not _that_ big of a deal. ...


This is most-likely easily and inexpensively reparable. See this thread: Three dimmers won't turn off.


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## Sayen

In the debate surrounding the _you should be happy, guess what we have_, the only catch is that many of these new theaters are built wrong, at twice the cost. My old theater, before the rebuild, was junk to work in, but I knew it was old junk so that was okay. You had to crawl on your belly to reach the partial FOH catwalk, for example. My new theater features multiple catwalks...but so much of the work was done wrong that many of the new elements are unusable, or pale versions of what the school should have recieved based on what they paid. The contractors and school officials were convinced they knew more than teachers or local experts, so they wouldn't listen to us, and continue even now to make poor decisions. The building is almost four years old, and we're still solving problems that should have been taken care of during the installation. For what we paid we should have a state of the art facility.

Unfortunately any time we, the staff, try to point out the problems the construction teams come back with that _guess what other schools have, you're lucky!_ line, and it takes another endless meeting full of price proof and industry recommendations to explain, for example, why when I push a button to turn a light on the light should actually turn on.

That button still doesn't work.


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## rwhealey

I feel bad for you guys. My High School's theater was proposed by the arts department chair and technical director after a lot of research (I've read the reports). He laid out the specifications and made most of the base decisions about what would be included in the space.

Then, the school hired an architect that specialized in school design, who proposed to build a facility exceeding the plans - and the community agreed to pay for it in a bond issue.

Technical equipment and consulting was performed by faculty from Webster University. The original technical director was directly involved throughout construction.

We ended up with one of the best theaters in the region.

Now, if you ask me about letting a school design a video information system...


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## mstaylor

I won't go into my HS theatre, it was garbage but it was old. Limited lights and autotransformer dimmers. However advance ten years and I was hired by my old principal to check out his new theatre. They installed two rows or strip lights for the stage, no thought to hanging anything else. One house electric with 6" fresnels on it. All circuits were hardwired to the dimmers. I checked it out and everything came on but the strips were were wired wrong. They were four circuit but he had wired them 1,2.3.4 not 1,5,9,13. The lighting company, read low bidder, came in and I explained the problem, they said if they came on then it was good. I then asked why fresnels instead of lekos, they didn't even know the terms. 
The electrician said he wouldn't rewire without new prints being drawn. I told the principal to accept iit and I would fix it. The owner of the electric company came in and when it was explained to him he told his foreman to fix it.


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## PeytonJr

mrtrudeau23 said:


> Starting onstage: no fly so everything was dead hung, no wings to speak of on either side of the stage, no shop to build anything in so all construction was done onstage, no changing areas, so the band and choir rooms across the hall served as dressing rooms/hang out areas for the cast. The stage dimensions themselves were approximately 40 feet deep by a wonderful 60ish feet across with a roof height of about 18-20 feet off the deck.


WOW that sounds almost exactly like the theatre that my school had for two years during a remodel. The only difference is that our stage was about ten feet wider, if you can imagine.
Boy am I glad we're out of there now. But now it's a whole different set of problems.


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## museav

There are many considerations that often go into school performing arts facilities. Budget is an obvious one and you cannot assume that the budget to do it right is always available at the same time the need to do something is there, although how that dilemma is handled can vary greatly.

Politics can be a factor. I have had multiple school districts that had less than ideal existing facilities and were concerned about improving the new facilities too much as it could result in complaints from those assigned to the older facilities. I quite literally had one school district hire us to look at what could be done better within the money they were spending only to then have them not implement some of the proposed changes in order to make the new facilities less dissimilar from the existing spaces. Another district had us not include the mixing console as an part of the system but rather to design for a console that the high school would provide itself, a solution to the school wanting to utilize a nicer console than what was in other existing theatres in the district schools. Ironically, the console they thought they had turned out to be an empty case, no idea where the console was, and they had an unusable sound system until the theatre groups came up with the money for a new console.

The long term/short term perspective is also a potential factor. Most performing arts facilities are viewed as long term facilities, which means sometimes looking beyond, or over, the current users and applications. I have experienced direct conflicts between the administration's long term goals for a facility and the goals of the current users to the point that it was not practical to reconcile the two. This is sometimes hard to accept, but from the administration's perspective the facility does not belong to the current students or instructors, it belongs to the school district and thus they are the ones that make the decisions.

Standards can also be enter into the result. I've seen a local high school plan a very nice theatre only to then have the school district's design standards imposed upon it resulting in a Scene Shop with 7' doors and Music Practice Rooms with door widths that would not allow a piano to be moved into the rooms. A school district in another state had 'standard' audio and lighting system packages, which were simply equipment lists, and the system designer's role for new facilities was limited to figuring out how to apply those standard components to spaces that were definitely not as standardized.

And of course the usual 'low, qualified bid' problems related to both consultants/designers and contractors have already been noted. Making this even more of a problem in some cases are Purchasing Agents who seem to feel feel their role is to get the lowest price, the don't have the technical expertise to address the value but they can understand the related dollars and cents. Just to be clear, I have worked with Purchasing people who were a joy to work with and a great benefit to the project, but just like most things, it seems that for every one of those there was one who had a very myopic view.

I don't mean to paint a picture of hopelessness, that is not at all the case. Based on my experience, the important thing is to recognize that there are many factors that can be part of the process and to learn to work within that environment. Some issues can be addressed with fairly simple things such as focusing on prioritizing your goals and needs rather than simply presenting a laundry list of everything and leaving it up to others to decide which are priorities. Other issues involve relationships, being seen by the Administration as a positive resource looking out for the general good rather than someone with their own personal agenda. Some things you can do relate to details, such as including some less important items that you can trade-off for more important ones while being perceived as making compromises. And some are homework, finding out about any standards or political issues that may apply prior to developing your own 'wish list' and working to resolve any internal conflicts as early as possible. Having a Consultant involved can certainly help in many areas and provide a 'disinterested third party' perspective, but it is still often how well you 'play the game' that matters as much as the technical expertise or experience.


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## MillburyAuditorium

soundlight said:


> Ahh... I feel a rant coming, one that has been posted many times here before.
> 
> 1) You have a Strand 300 series. I had the Lightronics "Crapbox II Pro S.O.L."
> 
> 2) You have catwalks. I had a hmm...how should I put it...shakey at best "ladder" to get to the FOH position.
> 
> 3) You at least have winches. Our electrics were fixed pipes at 17', our drapes (torn in some places) were fixed, our grand drape was fixed (at 3" of the deck, mind you, because the installer said that it "would stretch over time" - bullshit.)
> 
> 4) You have a balcony. We just had about 500 seats in one big rectangular box with a stage on one side of it, no proscenium, no balcony, etc.
> 
> 5) You have dimmable fixtures as house lights. Ours were fluorescent fixtures wired straight to breakers so that you would hear the "pop pop pop pop pop" as the house lights went out before the show.
> 
> I could go on forever...so much fun the "who's theater is the worst?" contest. I'm sure that there are plenty of other horror stories around here.




Same here for the FOH light :/ OLD OLD OLD shakey unsafe wood ladder tog et to the FOH spots :/


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## metti

The theatre my school had wasn't even a theatre until I got there. This room was an event type hall with a 30' wide x 12' high stage on one end. When I arrived the back of the stage was rotted and collapsed and the curtains were dry rotted and tattered. There were also no lights or supports. For the first show I just took down to curtains and used four t-stands with four PAR64s per stand running off DJ style dimmer packs that would trip the rooms ancient fuses every few minutes if we didn't get the perfect combination of outlets. After about a year of tireless work and fighting on my part as a student we got some new curtains, two dead hung battens (one over the stage and one over the audience), and some new electrical work. Since the batten over the stage was attached to a 2x4 spine on the plaster ceiling, we could only put 200lbs on it and the other one was too close to the stage so the lights were practically over the actors heads. In the end, I started bringing in my own equipment (at the time I did a lot of freelance lighting) and I would set up two 30' wide trusses over the audience and, since the schools system had all pars except for 4 S4 jrs, I would bring in some movers and S4s of my own. Eventually I got the school to pay me a little bit as a sort of rental fee for all this gear but I still would have rathered avoid a several day rigging and hanging fest just to get our lights up before each show.


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## MaddMaxx

Some "professional" theatres are just as bad. Most so-called designers couldn't build a working outhouse! How about this: a renovation of a 1930's grand movie theatre with 600 seats, a 36' x 48' floor level thrust stage, no backstage, no wings, and load in up a fire excape to a 6' square landing and turn right through a 3' x 7' exterior door...into the back of the house with a 2 story elevation? Or use their 6' square x 8' high freight elevator into the lobby? This place cost MILLIONS and is somewhere in DC!


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## blackisthenewblack

2 words: 
NO BUDGET!

This year, for the lights budget, I got 4-25' 4 pin xlr for gel scrollers
- End of Budget

A college theatre program in a gynasatheatre. 20 instruments, 15 residential lawn flood lights and a couple of gel scrollers. OOO, and ten strands of christmas lights!

Wait a second, its a 60x30' procenium.

To get the lift (Handy Herman) on stage, you use an atv winch on a pair of ghetto tracks in a stairwell. First, you manover the thing between the dimmer rack and the staircase, let out some of the winch, push the lift till it is sitting on the bolts of tracks, put some metal blocks underneath so that the other end gets high enough to clear the top of the stairs, then winch away. second, the winch sounds pathetic, two the lights directly overhead are dead, so you get to do the previous steps in semi-darkness (go flashlights).


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## punktech

i've got a good one:

the main theater at my former college, The MacConnell, is only about 6 years old. literally the whole thing, ground up, is 6. we've got good lights, good equipment, but the building is awful. when it was 4 years old, i first noticed the gigantic crack on the hallway-side of the SL wall. this crack was formed waaaaay up at the top of the theater. so it had probably been then since the building was finished. the crack is from the building settling, the disturbing part is what's happening to form this settling crack. now, a 6 year old building should settle all together, not The Mac. no one realized that once the stage is being used there will be massively more weight on it! so it's structured improperly for the weight on it, and now is sinking into the ground faster than the rest of the arts center. better yet, we had asked for a metal roof. well around the edges there is metal, it all looks metal, but above large chunks of the building, it's tar paper, tar paper doesn't do well with ice, which is what you get on large flat-roofed buildings. combine ice and tar paper and eventually the tar paper decides it doesn't want to work anymore, and you wind up with a flooded backstage area. in particular, the ATD's office, the room that houses the piano that is worth more than our lives, the entire blackbox (which was going to have a visiting professor from Oxford teaching in it that day) will flood with at least 4 inches of water. oh yeah, and a year later we find a new leak, at the back of the Mac, and 6 months later we find where that leak left all the water...UNDER THE STAGE! we called it Lake MacConnell, or the Pond. rip off the thrust/orchestra pit elevator section and pump out 300 GALLONS of water! and fans and heaters running under the stage for the next 2 months. the only time they went off was during certain, quiet performances, loud ones, the fans stayed on. oh yeah, this all still hasn't been repaired, just temporarily fixed, the ATD's office is still an obstacle course of buckets when it rains and there's a little piece of caulking in the big Lake MacConnell making leak...and it still leaks a little, as in, the concrete under the stage is wet nearly all the time. the black mold that will form if this is ever ignored will be just wonderful...

so you're theater sucks? at least you don't have hundreds of gallons of rainwater building up under your main stage for about 5 years......


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## NickVon

Edrick said:


> That's one of the "good" things about here all the theater is incadecent lights. "good" in that they are dimmable, but are energy hogs. It takes more power to run the theater than it does to run our entire E Building (4 floors, all classrooms, heating, computers, ect..)
> 
> It would suck to be in CA though since they're trying to ban incadecent lights.



that why any contractor with a brain would install both  we have incadesent house light fixtures in 4 "hanging chandlier type fixtures" but we have 12 Mercury Vapor (i think, think stadium lights) lights up in the high ceiling as Works. we also use Halogen lamps in our house lights. Little pricier but better cost/benift/life ratio.


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## DuckJordan

punktech said:


> i've got a good one:
> 
> the main theater at my former college, The MacConnell, is only about 6 years old. literally the whole thing, ground up, is 6. we've got good lights, good equipment, but the building is awful. when it was 4 years old, i first noticed the gigantic crack on the hallway-side of the SL wall. this crack was formed waaaaay up at the top of the theater. so it had probably been then since the building was finished. the crack is from the building settling, the disturbing part is what's happening to form this settling crack. now, a 6 year old building should settle all together, not The Mac. no one realized that once the stage is being used there will be massively more weight on it! so it's structured improperly for the weight on it, and now is sinking into the ground faster than the rest of the arts center. better yet, we had asked for a metal roof. well around the edges there is metal, it all looks metal, but above large chunks of the building, it's tar paper, tar paper doesn't do well with ice, which is what you get on large flat-roofed buildings. combine ice and tar paper and eventually the tar paper decides it doesn't want to work anymore, and you wind up with a flooded backstage area. in particular, the ATD's office, the room that houses the piano that is worth more than our lives, the entire blackbox (which was going to have a visiting professor from Oxford teaching in it that day) will flood with at least 4 inches of water. oh yeah, and a year later we find a new leak, at the back of the Mac, and 6 months later we find where that leak left all the water...UNDER THE STAGE! we called it Lake MacConnell, or the Pond. rip off the thrust/orchestra pit elevator section and pump out 300 GALLONS of water! and fans and heaters running under the stage for the next 2 months. the only time they went off was during certain, quiet performances, loud ones, the fans stayed on. oh yeah, this all still hasn't been repaired, just temporarily fixed, the ATD's office is still an obstacle course of buckets when it rains and there's a little piece of caulking in the big Lake MacConnell making leak...and it still leaks a little, as in, the concrete under the stage is wet nearly all the time. the black mold that will form if this is ever ignored will be just wonderful...
> 
> so you're theater sucks? at least you don't have hundreds of gallons of rainwater building up under your main stage for about 5 years......



They should close it down open a new indoor pool, yeah rain water sucks. We went through the same thing... our TD at the time decided to ignore the problem and just clear out the pit every spring. It took a student (me) to tell the Janitorial staff and they replaced the sump pump... Guess what no more leaks. In the Pit anyway, elsewhere the add on sections of our stage were not properly sealed (something i Personally will be doing this summer) so we just have custom build troughs for those doorways setup all spring. 

Yay for low bid....


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## tjrobb

More of a city problem, but our new studio leaks also.
It's a found space in what was a printing plant in the basement. Being an old building, it used to have under-sidewalk vaults. The city didn't like this (don't know why), so they put up CMU walls at the sidewalk-building line. Problem is, they set them on top of the existing slab and didn't seal them. Every time it rains water seeps in around the base of these walls, from the vault side into the studio. It's wet enough in the vault that the hydrostatic pressure forces out any caulk we try and put down. We're currently trying to find a solution, but so far all we have are "Wet Floor" signs.


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## venuetech

tjrobb said:


> More of a city problem, but our new studio leaks also.
> It's a found space in what was a printing plant in the basement. Being an old building, it used to have under-sidewalk vaults. The city didn't like this (don't know why), so they put up CMU walls at the sidewalk-building line. Problem is, they set them on top of the existing slab and didn't seal them. Every time it rains water seeps in around the base of these walls, from the vault side into the studio. It's wet enough in the vault that the hydrostatic pressure forces out any caulk we try and put down. We're currently trying to find a solution, but so far all we have are "Wet Floor" signs.



can you put a sump in?


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## tjrobb

Sadly, no sump. The size of the room, and lack of access to a floor drain or drain line, makes it infeasible. A French, weeping tile - type, drain would be best, but the closest sanitary line is at least 30' from the nearest point of the walls in question. We would end up ripping out the two walls for the drain (80'+) and then running across the room (another 30'), and even then we might be too low to tie into the sanitary line (the line is only 9'-10' below street level, we have some floor drains on the far side of the building running into a sump pit). Tying into the storm lines is impossible, they run across the ceiling of this room.

Sorry for the long reply, but it's been bothering me and I am trying to find a solution...


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## HornsOverIthaca

achstechdirector said:


> It also has the Strand 300 series console. It is a dream.


Uh, what? I have recurring nightmares about the Strand 300. When I first started using that console it was going very well. It was like meeting a new group of friends. Then a year later it was like that group of friends were beating me to death with steel rod.


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## caithnard

For the most part, my school's theatre is a dream: light-wise we have new ETC inventory, intelligent lights, and an ion to control it all. We have full fly and a fair amount of space in the scene shot and the doors from the shop to the stage are floor to ceiling.
But it's in the details where things go wrong. The theatre's undergone a series of renovations (mostly because of add-ons to the building, not changes to the theatre itself). Almost everything had to be adjusted at one point or another and the people who did the work were extremely sloppy. For example: the HVAC system was installed without first having taken dimensions of the place, resulting in it being too low in the house/over the pit. To compensate, they did what they thought was the smart solution of lowering the large acoustic panels. Unfortunately, lowering them means that we can never have a live orchestra in the pit, because that's all the audience will be able to hear. Also, we have an extremely high proscenium, but we can never use it, since the panels now sit below the top of it.
Another example: they had to remount the speaker system. In doing so, not only did they screw up the cabling, but they were too lazy to run the cables up to the grid. Instead, they decided it would be a good idea to drill a hole in our proscenium (our _black plaster_ proscenium, so now we're left with giant white holes) to run the cables.
Another example, done by the same people as above: our fly loft is awesome. The battens are weirdly spaced, but it's much better than other schools. Except the weights. They gave us the weights of the wrong dimensions--they're too wide--so if the bricks aren't lined up perfectly on neighbouring battens than they catch.
Finally, this is nobody's fault per se, but it's something that needs to get fixed. Many years ago, a student's arm got caught in the pit. He lost it. One would think, after that incident, that they would fix the pit and get one that was safer? Nope. They shifted it back to be centred again and called it a day. The pit now is impossible to level out (stage left is higher than stage right) and is operated to this day without any safety mechanisms.


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## zmb

A Strand 300 seems nice when having to go House 1/2, House Out, B/O, 2 lines, B/O, more lines on a straight 2 scene board (no subs).


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## PeytonJr

caithnard said:


> Finally, this is nobody's fault per se, but it's something that needs to get fixed. Many years ago, a student's arm got caught in the pit. He lost it. One would think, after that incident, that they would fix the pit and get one that was safer? Nope. They shifted it back to be centred again and called it a day. The pit now is impossible to level out (stage left is higher than stage right) and is operated to this day without any safety mechanisms.



Just... sheared off? *shudder*


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## CSCTech

Our place isn't the worst by any stretch. It isn't the best but I feel lucky to have what we do.

I am trying to get a genie for our FOH electric though, but hey, who doesnt love ladders? 
We have half flys that only go to a few feet above the proscenium..even though the towers are taller than that? Not sure why..think our arbors arent placed right, but ah well. At least we have counterwheights.
Two boarders and the mid traveler are dead hung. Boarders I could care less, although a pain to clean. Mid way, I wouldn't care if it wasn't like, a foot off the deck X_X.
Rear trav and one of the legs needs to be sewn here and there. Sound system is being replaced this summer so wont even go there. It isn't to bad but the center cluster is blown and the cabling is unshielded and hums when FOH channels are active.
No booth, but with the grant we got one is being built, plus a followspot, our place has never seen one yet, should be a wonderful addition.
And, I don't really have any other complaints other than it would be nice to have a full fly system, but hey. Im happy with what I have. Least we have a solid roof..Unlike the rest of the school!
And our roof smoke hatches dont leak thank god.

Oh, well, I guess it annoys me that the dimmer rack and amp rack are on stage right. This wouldnt annoy me if we didnt have a dimmer room...no lie. We have a dimmer room, but the dimmers are on stage right instead. 
And I guess it is a downer having a full Colortran setup. Personally, I have never had a problem with their fixtures and they seem pretty rugged and they have never broken on me. The i96 rack we have is perfectly fine, I keep it as clear as I can, clean the door filter and it has never overheated. Wish we had more wired dimmers though, we have like, 30 just sitting there in unwired channels. Maybe we can get some floor pockets put in, shouldn't cost to much.
But..oh boy oh boy our lightboard..Colortran Status 24/48. Wouldn't be to bad if the que system worked..or the screen isnt at full dark sicne the rheostat broke... or it saved when turned off..or had more than 48 control channels since we have 74 channels and 52 to control..And maybe if it didnt say 'Colortran' on the front 

Funny thing..kinda..was rehanging lights the otherday, when sotpatching, since its a one dimmer per channel thing, gotta love CT, I realised I had EXACTLY enough channels for the lights I hung.


(About Genies, How much do they go for and any info on them? I know they are a sort of scissor lift but dont know much at all about them. Wonder if it would fit on the wheelchair ramp xD)


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## belexes

I have a theory as to why there are these horror stories here: public schools do not care about art or creativity in general, and that's honestly what I feel. They're much more likely to give money to some stupid sports thing. Explains why the "education" system doesn't educate much at all. Sorry if that's not PC but it's true.


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## Tex

> I have a theory as to why there are these horror stories here: public schools do not care about art or creativity in general, and that's honestly what I feel. They're much more likely to give money to some stupid sports thing. Explains why the "education" system doesn't educate much at all. Sorry if that's not PC but it's true.


You are certainly entitled to express yourself, however I am living proof that what you posted is not true, but simply an opinion.
I have three theatres in my school, all fully equipped with great toys. I have a large enough budget to do productions right, a principal who fully supports the arts and, most importantly, a huge passion for what I do. My public school kids are just fine, thank you. (As are the students in the districts around me.)
In my opinion, if a fine arts program can't raise $1500 for scaffolding, then perhaps new leadership is required.
Sports has money because they make money and raise money. There are large numbers of kids participating and every game is like a musical where the entire family pays to get in. Ever seen an athletics booster club? They're huge around here and they're constantly raising money. I don't think they get more than they deserve based on the number of students they service. 
There can't possibly be an administrator left who hasn't seen the data which makes a direct correlation between academic performance and participation in the fine arts. If your local school district isn't acting on that data, then you have a beef with your local public schools. Not all public schools are artistic wastelands.
I'm sorry if this seems harsh, but attacking all public schools because of some stories on an Internet forum shows a lack of critical thinking and a complete disregard for all the great teachers out there (and right here!) who truly care about students.


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## belexes

I think a lot of teachers do care and there are public schools that do care and that do pay attention, and my statement wasn't to say that I have a problem with all teachers, but I've seen quite a lot of people that simply don't care. It's art, so it's not "academic" and therefore I've seen so many people take the attitude of "so why should we support it?". Any school that you've described - even with money as an issue, they should at least be open to the fact that some people do like to do it - is an example of a good school, but I honestly do see many schools as being precisely that, basically a wasteland. There do however exist places that are not like that and I wasn't trying to imply otherwise.

And also my judging is not based just off of things I read on the internet - that in itself is a pretty strong assumption. My evidence is not solely derived from internet sources.


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## zmb

belexes said:


> I have a theory as to why there are these horror stories here: public schools do not care about art or creativity in general, and that's honestly what I feel. They're much more likely to give money to some stupid sports thing. Explains why the "education" system doesn't educate much at all. Sorry if that's not PC but it's true.


 
I agree when I see how much stuff the sports program gets compared to the drama program. Especially being someone being a techie.


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## DuckJordan

belexes said:


> I think a lot of teachers do care and there are public schools that do care and that do pay attention, and my statement wasn't to say that I have a problem with all teachers, but I've seen quite a lot of people that simply don't care. It's art, so it's not "academic" and therefore I've seen so many people take the attitude of "so why should we support it?". Any school that you've described - even with money as an issue, they should at least be open to the fact that some people do like to do it - is an example of a good school, but I honestly do see many schools as being precisely that, basically a wasteland. There do however exist places that are not like that and I wasn't trying to imply otherwise.
> 
> And also my judging is not based just off of things I read on the internet - that in itself is a pretty strong assumption. My evidence is not solely derived from internet sources.



Now what you say about schools not seeing artistic as education is false most schools actually recognize arts more than say automotive or carpentry fields or "tech" fields. The only reason that it seems that sports get more money is because they end up having about 4 times as many students involved. It all comes down in the public school to booster clubs. Our theater who has never used any of the booster club resources literally in a month got the funding for a new spot light.

While some districts may seem to place emphasis on sports rather than the arts is based upon the students. Leader ship comes from within If you have a weak arts program then you don't get as much attention. Such as when our theater about 2 years ago started losing focus and started falling back into a routine, we lost a bunch of following. Then when we started adding more people using more of our budget and adding more artistic elements we got more and more of a response from the students which in turn gave us more and more response from other faculty.

So instead of blaming the district as a whole really focus it down to the people responsible (there are federal laws in place on schools that require them to spend certain x Dollars on different departments.)


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## Tex

belexes said:


> And also my judging is not based just off of things I read on the internet - that in itself is a pretty strong assumption. My evidence is not solely derived from internet sources.



Not an assumption at all. It's based on what you posted.


belexes said:


> I have a theory as to why there are these horror stories here: public schools do not care about art or creativity in general, and that's honestly what I feel.



You said your theory explained why these horror stories are here. I took you at your word.


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## Chris15

Ladies and Gentlemen, I refer you to Controlbooth's Core Values;

> The cornerstone values of our community is mutual respect between members. We pride ourselves in having a mature, civil, yet fun atmosphere where members are able to debate their differing opinions without resorting to flame wars.



I believe that the mutual respect has been lost in the discussion at this point and thus the flame war ends now.

Thread closed.


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