The Plight for a Place called Home

The lights controlled by the lighting board are hung from strategic places above the stage and on poles which stand on either side of the audience. To hang the lights and run power cables, (extension cords,) above the stage takes about one hour per light. We use eight to fourteen lights to light the main stage.

It takes another four hours to point them in the right direction, choose and duct tape the the gels to get whatever effects we are aiming for. It takes eight to twelve hours to do the same job, when ACTS lighting crew is interested in learning the principles of lighting design. Then we have to hang and wire the lights in multiple ways, and critique what we did before a solution is settled on. We can not get enough time in the building to normally teach people how to do lighting design.

The lights attached to the iron poles are called lekos. They are setup as close to show time as possible. The lekos light our sub-stages, and serve as front lights for our main stage. Along with the lekos, we setup the rest of our lighting equipment, that has to go out side the stage. Initial setup take four hours and fifteen minutes, with or without a crew.

Because we are doing this in multi-purpose room we have to break down our equipment after rehearsal, and during a show to accommodate the many other groups who use the same room. Long ago it was suggested by our new tech people that we use snakes to make our setup go faster. A snake is a group of electrical or sound cables secured together. This works very well when the setup is the same for every show. To increase rehearsal for are lighting and sound operators, I finally did start making snakes. Every show requires a new series of snakes, because I never do the lighting the same way from show to show.

If rehearsal is four hours and setting up the equipment takes four hours, and someone else has reserved the same room we are working in after we leave, we can not take the four hours we need to set up lighting and sound. So every show we bring in boxes of cable, stretch all the cords out to their approximate final location, duct tape them together, and label them. This reduces rehearsal setup time to about ten minutes, after the initial setup.

Time is a problem again. The actors need to use the stage during rehearsal time. They need to learn where to stand, where to sit, where fall, what volume they need to use so that everyone can hear them. The director needs to look at where everyone is, what everyone is doing, and coordinate everything into a final production. The director can not do this when the tech people are on stage, with their ladders, lights gels, and duct tape.