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I am super excited that a new fine arts building just might be on the horizon for our small rural school! We are currently running shows on a 24x24 92-year-old historic auditorium stage, so this is HUGE for us, literally and figuratively :) I need help finding what space will best meet our needs. We are thinking a relatively small standalone, about a 300 person seater with a lobby, no classrooms needed, but more importantly, I need a great costume storage/sewing/set construction/ and dressing room set up!  Anyone have some plans or sketches that you'd be able to share?

Thank you!!

Hi Analiese,

It's so great that your school may be getting a new fine arts building! 

Even if your facility will be small (although 300 seats is nothing to sneeze at!), as well as starting to plan for the physical build of the space, be sure to plan for who will be using it.  Because everyone will want to!  Not only drama, music and dance, but the school talent show, and then the district will want to start hosting meetings and events there, and pretty soon your local dance schools will want to be renting it out for their end of school-year recitals and Nutcrackers.

The trouble is… that while schools manage to raise the money for capital projects to build a theatre facility, once the keys are handed over there is no money budgeted to operate these facilities. I've seen too many school districts taken by surprise once their theatre opens and soon discover that they need to staff the facility. So school district administrators, therefore, typically jump to the conclusion that their performing arts teacher – that's you!  - can run the facility. 

Your district should be looking past the building completion, after the doors open, and considering the very real probability that your new state of the art theatre – no matter how physically small - will need to be staffed by a Theatre Manager and technicians (professionals or paid student crews). 

On the PRESETT website there are some examples of "gold standard" high school theatres – you can check them out at  https://www.presett.org/theatresafetystandards.html. 

I can't recommend strongly enough that your district be prepared ahead of time to hire a Theatre Manager and technicians once the theatre is built (before the doors open if possible!). Or…be prepared to fill those shoes 

All the best,

Beth

I am super excited that a new fine arts building just might be on the horizon for our small rural school! We are currently running shows on a 24x24 92-year-old historic auditorium stage, so this is HUGE for us, literally and figuratively :) I need help finding what space will best meet our needs. We are thinking a relatively small standalone, about a 300 person seater with a lobby, no classrooms needed, but more importantly, I need a great costume storage/sewing/set construction/ and dressing room set up!  Anyone have some plans or sketches that you'd be able to share?

Thank you!!

I am super excited that a new fine arts building just might be on the horizon for our small rural school! We are currently running shows on a 24x24 92-year-old historic auditorium stage, so this is HUGE for us, literally and figuratively :) I need help finding what space will best meet our needs. We are thinking a relatively small standalone, about a 300 person seater with a lobby, no classrooms needed, but more importantly, I need a great costume storage/sewing/set construction/ and dressing room set up!  Anyone have some plans or sketches that you'd be able to share?

Thank you!!

I am super excited that a new fine arts building just might be on the horizon for our small rural school! We are currently running shows on a 24x24 92-year-old historic auditorium stage, so this is HUGE for us, literally and figuratively :) I need help finding what space will best meet our needs. We are thinking a relatively small standalone, about a 300 person seater with a lobby, no classrooms needed, but more importantly, I need a great costume storage/sewing/set construction/ and dressing room set up!  Anyone have some plans or sketches that you'd be able to share?

Thank you!!

One thing I would advise: a full, proper fly loft is a nonnegotiable.

I taught at 2 different schools that both were supposed to have fly lofts as part of the original plans only to have them dropped as construction began and concerns about cost mounted.  So it was dropped.

The local major state university had the same thing happen with their performing arts center and it has hampered their program and their ability to bring in Broadway tours ever since.  They have decided to build a new performing arts center that will have one and will also be ADA compliant (it's a 3-story building, classrooms on top floor and NO elevator). 

Dig in your heals, build support, and make sure you have that loft so you can fly!

Also, if you can finagle it: see push for multiple performance spaces: the main theatre, a black box with seating at about half to 1/3 of main space, and if this is also going to be the home for theatre arts classes, a classroom that is a small black box as well with everything set up so it they can teach tech too.

And that gets to one more point: a scene shop and a boat load of storage, not just for sets, but for costumes, lighting, and props.  

And on lighting - be sure it is not a fixed, static plot with all instruments locked down.  Push for full flexibility, both above the stage (see fly loft) and on all FOH positions which should be either catwalk accessible or on trusses on motorized lifts so they can be lowered for hanging/aiming.

I am super excited that a new fine arts building just might be on the horizon for our small rural school! We are currently running shows on a 24x24 92-year-old historic auditorium stage, so this is HUGE for us, literally and figuratively :) I need help finding what space will best meet our needs. We are thinking a relatively small standalone, about a 300 person seater with a lobby, no classrooms needed, but more importantly, I need a great costume storage/sewing/set construction/ and dressing room set up!  Anyone have some plans or sketches that you'd be able to share?

Thank you!!

One thing I would advise: a full, proper fly loft is a nonnegotiable.

I taught at 2 different schools that both were supposed to have fly lofts as part of the original plans only to have them dropped as construction began and concerns about cost mounted.  So it was dropped.

The local major state university had the same thing happen with their performing arts center and it has hampered their program and their ability to bring in Broadway tours ever since.  They have decided to build a new performing arts center that will have one and will also be ADA compliant (it's a 3-story building, classrooms on top floor and NO elevator). 

Dig in your heals, build support, and make sure you have that loft so you can fly!

Also, if you can finagle it: see push for multiple performance spaces: the main theatre, a black box with seating at about half to 1/3 of main space, and if this is also going to be the home for theatre arts classes, a classroom that is a small black box as well with everything set up so it they can teach tech too.

And that gets to one more point: a scene shop and a boat load of storage, not just for sets, but for costumes, lighting, and props.  

And on lighting - be sure it is not a fixed, static plot with all instruments locked down.  Push for full flexibility, both above the stage (see fly loft) and on all FOH positions which should be either catwalk accessible or on trusses on motorized lifts so they can be lowered for hanging/aiming.

I am super excited that a new fine arts building just might be on the horizon for our small rural school! We are currently running shows on a 24x24 92-year-old historic auditorium stage, so this is HUGE for us, literally and figuratively :) I need help finding what space will best meet our needs. We are thinking a relatively small standalone, about a 300 person seater with a lobby, no classrooms needed, but more importantly, I need a great costume storage/sewing/set construction/ and dressing room set up!  Anyone have some plans or sketches that you'd be able to share?

Thank you!!

I am super excited that a new fine arts building just might be on the horizon for our small rural school! We are currently running shows on a 24x24 92-year-old historic auditorium stage, so this is HUGE for us, literally and figuratively :) I need help finding what space will best meet our needs. We are thinking a relatively small standalone, about a 300 person seater with a lobby, no classrooms needed, but more importantly, I need a great costume storage/sewing/set construction/ and dressing room set up!  Anyone have some plans or sketches that you'd be able to share?

Thank you!!

I am super excited that a new fine arts building just might be on the horizon for our small rural school! We are currently running shows on a 24x24 92-year-old historic auditorium stage, so this is HUGE for us, literally and figuratively :) I need help finding what space will best meet our needs. We are thinking a relatively small standalone, about a 300 person seater with a lobby, no classrooms needed, but more importantly, I need a great costume storage/sewing/set construction/ and dressing room set up!  Anyone have some plans or sketches that you'd be able to share?

Thank you!!

Wow.  This has been a very helpful and informative discussion to follow from the sidelines, and I hope that it continues.

I've been working for 39 years with a substandard auditorium that was short-changed because, when it was built, this was a Black school in a segregated school district.  (Schools built around the same time in then-largely-white neighborhoods have notably better auditoriums.)  Only minimal upgrades have been made over the years.  On two occasions, we were told that we were going to get a real theatre, and each time, the plans fell apart.  Well, I can keep hoping.

One of our upgrades only occurred by a happy accident.  I was in the auditorium on the day when district maintenance coincidentally arrived to look the place over.  Upon learning that I was one of the school's theatre teachers, they asked me exactly where backstage I wanted the new lighting and sound boards to be located.  They were stunned when I told them that we didn't want them backstage, but at the rear of the auditorium, and elevated as much as possible with a clear view of the stage itself.  I actually had to explain to them why this was preferable, and even then, they seemed dubious.  But we got a catwalk out of that, and I shudder to think what might have happened if I hadn't gone into the auditorium on a whim that day during my planning period.

The many stories that people have shared from experience here remind me of what my Introduction to Theatre professor told our class more than once waaaaay back in 1980: "They never let anyone who knows anything about theatre anywhere near the design and construction of a school auditorium."  It's sad to see that that largely still seems to be true, and that we teachers have to fight to take the reins to ensure that we're not given spaces that look impressive to a School Board but that are largely useless in the day-to-day operations of theatre.

Congrats to the OP on the new space, and all good wishes that it turns out to be everything that you need.  Everyone else, keep the advice coming!

I am super excited that a new fine arts building just might be on the horizon for our small rural school! We are currently running shows on a 24x24 92-year-old historic auditorium stage, so this is HUGE for us, literally and figuratively :) I need help finding what space will best meet our needs. We are thinking a relatively small standalone, about a 300 person seater with a lobby, no classrooms needed, but more importantly, I need a great costume storage/sewing/set construction/ and dressing room set up!  Anyone have some plans or sketches that you'd be able to share?

Thank you!!

I am super excited that a new fine arts building just might be on the horizon for our small rural school! We are currently running shows on a 24x24 92-year-old historic auditorium stage, so this is HUGE for us, literally and figuratively :) I need help finding what space will best meet our needs. We are thinking a relatively small standalone, about a 300 person seater with a lobby, no classrooms needed, but more importantly, I need a great costume storage/sewing/set construction/ and dressing room set up!  Anyone have some plans or sketches that you'd be able to share?

Thank you!!