A Shell Game, please help

So. In Medford, a smallish but closish suburb of a Boston, there is a park with a bandshell. Your Humble Blogger likes bandshells, although, now that I think of it, I almost never attend concerts or performances at them. In ten years of living in Boston, I never went to a show at the Hatch Shell. I saw outdoor shows at Copley, and somewhere on the waterfront, and some other random locations in Cambridge, but not at the bandshell. I’m trying to remember if the Shakespeare productions I saw in Golden Gate Part were at the bandshell. There’s a bandshell in Bushnell Park in Hartford, and I’ve never seen anything there, either. Well, anyway. This note isn’t supposed to be about what a loser I am, it’s supposed to be about bandshells.

This bandshell is old and decrepit, like most bandshells are these days I imagine, and the town is going to knock it down and build a new one. Hurrah! Support for the arts and the community! Party at the new bandshell!

So, it happens that Michael, a Gentle Reader of this Tohu Bohu, is on the Medford Arts Council, and he and has asked YHB and his fellow GRs to contribute from their personal experience what information the town should have as it creates the plan. My own experience is with theater, and very little of that has (thank the Divine) been spent outdoors, but herewith all my advice.

First of all, there must be nearby restrooms, and the siting of the restrooms has to be in such a way that the lines do not interfere with the sightline of the audience to the stage. Real restrooms, not jay-johns. In the building with the restrooms, there should be a faucet and a large basin that isn’t in either restroom. There should also be a storage shed, which I would think would be in the same building (with running water), although if aesthetics push for more small buildings than one big one, that’s OK, too, but there should be running water, a sink and electricity in the storage shed as well as the restrooms.

I think it would be very useful to have, in the storage shed, a rod for clothes to be hung up. For costumes to be kept overnight, but mostly for street clothes while the performance is going on. That’s not just for actors, most of whom will prefer to arrive in costume, but for high school bands and cloggers and Scottish dancers and other costumey concert shows. The facility could just have a rolling clothes rack, but those things are cheap and crappy, and I think a permanent one, which would be cheap and not-so-crappy, would be worth installing. Also, not a bad idea to have a biggish mirror, but that is fairly expensive, and involves somebody cleaning it every so often, and then they break and there’s bad luck. So, actually, yes, a bad idea. Finally, within the storage shed, which should probably have a combination lock so that the heads of various groups can get in and out without having (and losing) keys, I’d like to have a set of small lockers, so that on days with multiple events each group could store its small valuables (fifes if not drums) in safety.

If there are no permanent lights, and I would prefer to have those, there need to be electrical poles you can easily set up and take down, with clamps for lights (and the town should own a set of lights that it will lend for a small fee and a big deposit). The shell itself should have clamps for lights, preset for a basic stage wash. Even if almost every performance will be in the daytime, on a cloudy day in the autumn, even basic lights will perk up the stage, the performance and the audience.

My Gentle Reader informs me that (as has become unfortunately common) the new bandshell won’t be a proper shell at all, but will be open in the back. If so, it will need to have clamps for speakers on those electrical poles I was mentioning earlier, and again, the town should consider buying a couple of stand mics and a couple of body mics and charging a smallish fee and a largish deposit. It is much much much much better to have an excellent acoustical shell and leave off the amplification, but there it is. The people who know more about acoustics than anybody are at MIT; greater Bostonian towns should have access to that expertise but probably don’t.

Also, if there is no back wall, there must be a good way to rig a backdrop, presumably canvas/vinyl from poles with tether rings on the back of the stage. I see that sort of thing a lot, I’m sorry to say, and actually it works just fine. The town should budget to own some plainish backdrops, available to lend out; the school district should have one of its own, with the town and school shields, that can be kept in the storage shed. Oh, speaking again of that shed? All this stuff that the town owns and is willing to lend out will have to be locked up separately from the room that the arts groups are able to use.

What else… there should be steps up to the stage on all sides, both for the convenience of crazy directors and for the convenience of picnickers when there isn’t a performance. It’ll need a ramp, too; my advice is a pair of ramps at upstage right and left. Also, as (Michael informs me) the rake of the grassy audience area is shallow, choral groups will need risers, so I would advise talking to somebody who knows about anchoring points for standard riser sets. For electricity, I would want recessed outlets downstage center (for the conductor!) and upstage right and left, as well as the electrical poles and, ideally, in the roof by the clamps for the lights and speakers.

In these cellphoney days, there’s no need for an intercom between the storage/prep shed and the shell, and no need for a telephone, either. I don’t think an A.S.M. light is necessary. A clear flat area behind the stage would be lovely, for a group to set up a props table (or a props square of grass) and to sit around putting on makeup and stretching.

As for the stage itself, it’ll be tough to deal with varying interests and the elements. I would think it would be lovely to have anchoring points so that flats and cubes and so on can be stable even if it’s windy, but then you would break the clogs right off the cloggers. If you have a wooden stage floor, you will have to have a Policy about nailing things down. Maybe some other Gentle Reader can help with that; my job (when I have it) is to stand in the light, make myself heard, and not bump into the furniture.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.