Recommended Facilities for Hosting One-Act Play Contests

The League strongly recommends the selection of the best theatre facility available. The contest site should have an auditorium/theatre-type building which meets all state and civil safety codes and fulfills minimum requirements for the One-Act Play Contest. Cafetorium/gymatorium-type facilities are not and cannot be made suitable for the League’s One-Act Play Contest.

Minimum Theatre Size

1. The theatre should seat no fewer than 250 audience members.
2. The stage house should have a proscenium opening not less than 30 feet wide by 18 feet high.
3. The height of the stage from the audience floor level should be at least 40" with an incline of 15^o in audience seating.
4. Minimum stage depth from curtain line to the upstage drapery should be no less than 20 feet.
5. The stage house should have adequate offstage space for shifting and storage of scenery and properties. A space of not less than one-half the proscenium opening is strongly recommended and is essential on at least one side. 6. A backstage crossover of not less than four feet should be available between the upstage drapery and the back wall.

Minimum Scenery

1. The stage should have a house curtain and sufficient soft scenery: borders, legs, cyclorama, etc., to mask backstage and offstage areas allowing for offstage entrances and exits from either side and the rear.
2. The League Approved Unit Set should be provided as per examples in the “Supplements” of this HANDBOOK.
3. Standard door and window units should be provided as per examples in the “Supplements” of this HANDBOOK.

Minimum Lighting

1. The lighting plot should be laid out in a “standard method,” with six or more acting areas established.
2. Each acting area should be independently controllable and controlled by individual controllers.
3. The use of the three primary colors in light - red, blue and green - as general washes is strongly recommended. Wash colors should be individually controlled with dimmers. Border lights are unnecessary. A color wash is best produced with flood lights.
4. Lighting instruments available should consist of no less than eighteen (18) ellipsoidal or other type suitable instruments from a beam position and twenty-four (24) fresnel or other type suitable spotlights from teaser positions, flood type instruments sufficient to create general color washes noted above as well as one high-power follow-spot equipped with a variety of color filters.
5. Lighting control systems should include thirty-six (36) channels of control, fifty (50) twenty-amp circuits, 2.4kw dimmer per circuit power, 120 volts AC distribution system.

Sound

1. The theatre should be equipped with an in-house master amplification system and mixer control board into which competing companies can plug standard RCA-type jacks from record players, CD players, cassette players or reel-to-reel tape decks and an intercommunication system between major operation systems (lights, sound, stage manager, etc.) in the theatre.
2. The theatre should be equipped to supply at least two hand-held microphones with enough cable to reach the width of the proscenium opening.

Dressing Rooms

1. All contest sites are expected to provide adequate dressing areas.
2. The building facility should allow for at least four competing companies at one time with adequate lighting, mirrors, rest rooms, and lavatories to handle the maximum cast of fifteen per company.