How common is it for a large rental venue to NOT have a rep plot installed? I recently got offered a gig to design for a dance concert this weekend at a pretty big rental venue. I reached out to the house TD to schedule a time for me to come in and look at the space and see how they have their rep plot set up. I was then told that the venue does not have a rep plot, and when clients come to rent the space, they will just set up their own plot. Currently, they just have whatever fixtures are still up from the previous rental group, which is just a couple of fixtures on the 2nd electric.
I don’t have a ton of experience in larger rental houses, but from my understanding, I have found it pretty typical for a venue to have a basic rep plot that they restore to.
I’m meeting with the house TD tomorrow morning to look at the space. Part of me is tempted to just walk away from the job. My only other thought is to coordinate with the client and essentially charge them triple if I’m able to come in the day before and get stuff hung.
Any thoughts or suggestions for what I could do here? Obviously I want to provide the client with a good design, but also I don’t want to go to a gig for 16 hours and just sit there.
I’ve had this happen a few times, and it can be a real hassle. If the venue doesn’t have a rep plot, you might be able to ask if they can at least give you access to the space earlier than usual, so you can get things set up properly. Charging more for the extra work is totally fair. Just make sure to communicate clearly with your client!
In the venues I usually work with, rep plots are pretty much nonexistent. In fact, most of these places don’t have any rigging at all until I set it up myself. I bring everything needed for the job—truss, motors, fixtures, consoles, and cabling.
I mostly work in convention centers, hotel ballrooms, and corporate meeting rooms. Occasionally, clients will opt for a theatre space, often within a convention center, but even those typically lack rep plots and are just bare infrastructure.
In the venues I usually work with, rep plots are pretty much nonexistent. In fact, most of these places don’t have any rigging at all until I set it up myself. I bring everything needed for the job—truss, motors, fixtures, consoles, and cabling.
I mostly work in convention centers, hotel ballrooms, and corporate meeting rooms. Occasionally, clients will opt for a theatre space, often within a convention center, but even those typically lack rep plots and are just bare infrastructure.
I work at a casino with two venues, both equipped with rep plots. The smaller venue’s plot is fixed and never changes; we can make reasonable modifications, but the bars are all hung on calibrated motors. The larger venue recently got a brand-new rig, which we’ve only used twice so far. We’re hoping it stays as is for the foreseeable future.
It really depends on how the space is used. At the roadhouse where I worked, we always maintained a rep FOH plot, but the stage plot would vary. For road shows, we’d keep the stage bare or set up softgoods as needed, so they could install their own overhead rig and connect to our FOH for front lighting. When we were operating as a rental house for local groups, we’d restore the overstage rep plot for their use.
TL;DR: The FOH setup (with 2 levels of box booms and 3 catwalk systems) stayed the same, while the overstage setup was either a rep plot, a show-specific configuration, or completely cleared for road shows.