jimmy, when I have seen portables used to light a choir or quartet performing at our church, they've been mounted in vertical banks on poles from the sides and aimed in from there in an effort to wash out each other's shadows. But this has been to supplement existing lighting. It was provided not by us (the church hosting the event), or by the performers, but by the organization sponsoring the event. To provide enough light for a totally dark setting would be quite a challenge.

It's not unlike a similar situation our church had to facilitate for one of these organizations. They used our space while their main space was being renovated-- and they just had no idea how to "produce" an event that could meet the contractual requirements of the performers they had engaged. We often bailed the visiting performers out of the org's mistakes, feeding them for example when the org didn't realize that singers eat AFTER a big show-- and our town's restaurants all close very early.

(Nice, huh? "You'll have to grab a bite at the only gas station open, I guess, as you head out of town. The nearest sit-down place open will be at least an hour down the road." BTW these were two African American men traveling thru our almost all-white county in a huge blizzard with a dangerous mountain to cross by car.... who were accustomed to Carnegie Hall appearances. "But we gave them the water and grapes their contract specified, before the show...." said the sponsors.)


Back to tech requirements.... For one jazz vocal singer, for instance, there were specific sound requirements in the contract. In the days before their arrival, we finally convinced the "producing" organization that had signed her contract that they would have to hire a sound provider, because her needs were FAR above anything the church had for Sunday sound, or anything Hardi and I owned personally for our gigs-- we knew this because for a previous concert, we had ended up having to lend our stuff to this org. The performing quartet was, to say the least, very kind to us about the deficiencies from the contracted specs. Our "system" was tiny!!!

The org just did not understand what they were getting into, to hire-in people with large-space requirements to make a rural tour in small spaces.

Yet in the US with bigger venues a day's driving apart, these tours are the bread and butter of performers to make gas money as they travel from large space to large space-- much as folkies will fill a tour with weeknight house concerts to make travel bucks to get from larger city venue to city venue. (And hopefully sell CDs.)


So I think that this is a technical battle you will find hard to win with your own equipment.... but that it should be considered as you would consider the supplying of a sound system. The a capella quartet that used little system, for example, traveled with their own full set of gear in case house systems they encountered did not suffice-- they used our system but ran their own mics into it, because setting up their own stuff had not been contracted and because, therefore, they had not paid for extra roadie help to come along to our town. So they were only willing to unpack the mics, being singers who cared about the mic for vocal effects in their particular set list.


Another visiting group settled for the pole lights the local community theater group loaned and rigged-- the lighting equivalent of our insufficient sound system. But it was the sponsoring organization that arranged it (and presumably paid for it).


You need to think about how to work with the organizations, sponsoring parties, and/or venues to comply with your requirements. Or else rig a very cheap and very lightweight "just in case" set of stuff that is not professional-quality-- clamp lamps, I'm afraid, with bulbs carefully packed for protection and extras on board to replace breakage.

~Susan