How to Prioritize High School Theatre Issues
Hello! First reddit post, long time lurker, so apologies for any formatting issues. I am going into my first year of teaching theatre at a highschool with a surprising amount of issues in the auditorium that have not been taken care of. We are working with a limited budget, but are able to do fundraisers, so I am looking for help on how to prioritize the issues while being cost effective. Unfortunately, these are all personal observations from the shows or things passed onto me from the previous director as I don't get my keys until next week. The things I have found/been told so far are:
- I have been warned that after a power surge, the light board "cannot be turned off" or it takes a really long time to power up and often deletes presets. However, in the inventory list I was provided, we have a Strand Lighting MX 24 channel board AND an ETC Lighting Board listed and no notes on which is currently in use.
- Said issue somehow lead to the preset boards for turning on lights when you came into the auditorium being removed? And nobody can tell me any info on what the equipment removed was.
- 50% sure every single speaker in the auditorium is blown or not putting out sound (only observed from coming to previous shows/concerts in the auditorium and community complaints that you can only hear in one part of the house and sound quality is awful. Getting keys next week so I can confirm.)
- Every sound related port on the stage (think monitors, wired comms) is either non-functional or very rarely works in a specific position.
- Speaking of backstage comms, they recently bought a cheap set of walkies because of aforementioned issue that they used that already need replaced.
- God Mic is non-operational.
- 1 out of 2 follow spots is operational.
- All of our safety backstage lights are missing and were not used the last year.
- We started with 25 wireless/onstage actor mics and now have 19, but the first show selected was Into The Woods.
- There is no current/updated lighting plot available.
This is only without being able to get into the space until next week to really dig into these issues. We only have a limited amount of time (around 4 weeks) before I get students in the space daily, so my questions are this:
What do I prioritize before students come in?
How can I get this to a point where our first show is operational/safe? (We are looking at about 20 actors, unless I can get another double casting squeezed in there)
Any recommendations for backstage comms? (Or honestly, any of this equipment?)
Tips for finding the problem myself or phoning a friend to get the issue found?
Apologies for the long post, but after researching and finding solutions to a lot of the other classroom issues, this is my current list I am stuck on really finding a fix for or playing the high school budget/workaround game. I appreciate any and all tips!