Part 3 of a 3-part series on SPACE IN THE THEATRE which will be posted every other week.
One common complication that educational theatre people (teachers, theatre staff volunteers and students) have is that there is not enough storage space, build space and people space built into their multi-million-dollar high school theatre facilities. Understandably space is expensive to provide and maintain, and the theatre is not the only part of a high school, however if it is your plan to create a theatre program ample space must be provided in order to do so.
As well as object storage you also have to have somewhere to put people. Most high school theatres that I’ve worked in have one or two make-up rooms that can accommodate about 20 actors, or perhaps one or two closet-sized dressing rooms. When you are designing a high school theatre, consider that a school production can have 40 or so actors, in addition to a 20 piece orchestra for a musical, and 10 or 15 student crew members. There can be 70 students working on a production that need to fit somewhere.
In addition, most high schools rent out their theatres to help pay for costs. One of the main staples of income for most of the high school theatres that I’ve worked at are dance schools. Dance schools can come with 100 to 150 dancers, aged 2 to 18. In order to accommodate this number of people, a lot of high school theatres also rent out their performing arts classrooms. Much to the chagrin of the teachers, who have to put away equipment and supplies – particularly the performing arts teachers (think of a band room). One choir teacher I worked with insisted that the sound technician come in a half hour early in order to put away her piano and sound equipment before outside events used her room, and stay a half an hour after the event in order to set the equipment back up again. Because outside events expect to have rental-ready spaces, the technician’s time became a school expense.
Most high schools can’t afford to have a space be empty during the school year, so it may seem impractical to build a ‘green room’ for performers to only use in non-school hours, but consider the alternate costs that will plague you for the life of the high school theatre. As a compromise, perhaps a room such as that could be booked for testing during the school day, or other miscellaneous school-day activities, which could be scheduled on an as-needed basis around production schedules. But even so, the primary scheduling priority should be as a theatre green room.
