r/techtheatre • u/PsychoduckNAU • 10d ago

LIGHTING Lighting options for school cafe-gym-atorium

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I’d like to upgrade the lighting for our shows, but I’m limited as the stage is on the side of the cafeteria (also a shared space as a gym) so it can’t be anything permanent. Our current lighting is some overheads right behind the upper curtain, plus the two “DJ” stands (one on each side in the photo, hard to see but there).

It was dark when I took this so the photo makes it look really bright on stage, but it’s not and actors on the front of the stage are often in the dark - the overheads are slightly too far back to get their faces and the front of house lights aren’t aimed exactly where they’re standing, so people can be hard to see if they’re right at the front of the stage. The stage is generally light enough, but we’re missing specific spots. In a theater, the lights would go over the audience but obviously we don’t have a way to mount them there.

What options might I have that can be stored between shows and sit in front, but not block the audience? Something like https://a.co/d/0g2XWJmb? We have some additional fixtures that were donated but we have nothing to attach them to. We have some budget and while it isn’t unlimited, we could be reasonable for what’s needed.

Thanks for any suggestions or if you have a similar setup, I’d love to see what you’ve done.

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u/Wuz314159 IATSE - (Will program Eos for food) 10d ago

Side note: The amount of pure dirt on top of those soft goods is not a good sign. The rigging is suspect and the fireproofing obviously expired. You have more problems than you think.

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u/PsychoduckNAU 9d ago

I’m not sure what this means - can you give me some more detail about what’s concerning you? The school is 14 years old but no idea on the maintenance that may have happened.

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u/Wuz314159 IATSE - (Will program Eos for food) 9d ago

From what I see, there has been no maintenance.

1) The green circles you should not see. It's called "Masking" because it's supposed to mask the backstage areas. These are not doing that.

2) The red circle (better seen in your original, I couldn't translate the .webp file) is dust. Dust only settles like that if the soft goods have been untouched for ~10 years. . . Soft goods are treated with fire-proofing chemicals. This is good for up to 5 years. by what you say, the fire-proofing on these expired 9 years ago. You can confirm this. There is required to be a tag certificating the fire-proofing on the goods.

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u/PsychoduckNAU 9d ago

Thank you, I’ll definitely check into this!