Hi all!
My name is Jen, and I am with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. When our Museum was built, a "theatre" space was constructed, but never finished.
We are looking at finally getting the space up and running, and I had some questions and was hoping to connect with anyone with something similar.
The vision of the space is this:
It will be a mixed use space. Will have the capacity as a seated theatre with seats that retract to have an open space that could accommodate round tables, or just a GA space. Will have permanent AV/sound/audio capable for small theatrical performances, musical acts, meeting space, educational classes, live stream broadcasting, film festivals etc.
We are in the early planning of this, and am looking at how it works for you from an operational standpoint.
Thanks
Jen
I am another performing arts to museums convert! I have only worked at my museum for a couple of months but as far as I know:
We have a 500-seat theater at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture. We mostly use it for lectures so it is very low-tech. We only have one IT person on staff who mostly only handles sound checks (handheld mics and lavs.) We also live stream most events. Our IT person, VP of Guest Engagement, and our VP of marketing all know how to run that. Our guest services team handles daily admissions tickets to the museum and ticketing for the theater events through Tessitura.
My husband is the A/V supervisor at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Next door. They are not a Tessitura organization but I am familiar with their setup. He handles all events in their 500-seat theater. They used to host Theatre Virginia productions in their space so they have a large array of A/V. They have a full-time A/V supervisor and a full-time assistant. They also handle A/V for the rest of the museum: meetings, special events, rentals, etc in a wide variety of spaces inside and outside the museum.