This is not like me… People who know me know that I’m a behind-the-scenes kinda guy. As Pentacle Theatre’s Technical Director for the past 22 years, I’m not used to being front and center; the limelight belongs to others. But, I’m going to take this moment to step into the spotlight for a very important cause—putting our productions in the best light possible.
You have come to deserve and expect high quality from Pentacle Theatre productions—artistically and technically. As Technical Director, I’m writing to ask for your support to improve the technology we use to light our shows. If we make the investment, our lighting will be both more efficient and we will have more creative options for our lighting designs and installations.
There are two key problems we are trying to fix.
The first: our current light board runs with a floppy disk. Yes, you read that correctly. The technology that was super high tech in the 70s and 80s (and was almost obsolete by 2007) is what makes all the lights run at Pentacle Theatre.
Basically, the existing light board is an antique. If it fails, all the lights (literally) go off. And to make it an even more compelling problem, because of its age, the light board is often way too difficult and confusing for our volunteer operators and programmers to use. A new board will provide an amazing 36 additional individual lights that we can control—exponentially improving the kind of lighting we can do on stage.
The second problem: there aren’t enough electrical outlets to support a new light board and all things we want to do with lights. We need to install 36 new outlets. That, as you can imagine, is expensive.
A number of foundations have agreed that we need an upgrade. So far, we’ve raised $17,000 to purchase and install a new light board plus two spotlights. That’s good news.
Here’s where we need your help.
The Reser Family Foundation has awarded us $10,000—but to get that money, we need to raise an additional $17,000. The Reser Family generously pledged their funds in 2015 and they expect that we’ll raise the money by the end of the year. We don’t want to wait that long. We want to start putting a new light board to use sooner rather than later.
That’s why I decided that I needed to be the one to write to you. Having excellent lighting in the theater is important to me and I know it’s that important to you—because you love Pentacle’s great community theater.
In advance, thank you so much for your dedication and donations to making the Pentacle lights bright and theater great.
With gratitude (from behind the scenes),
Tony Zandol
Technical Director
P.S. We’re trying to get the all the funds raised for new light board and its installation by September 1. Please send in a contribution as soon as you can! Thanks for all your support.
