With the offer of state funding in WA for amateur theatres, the decisions on what to apply for need researching and some professional advice is required to explain the theatre lighting requirements of amateur theatre groups. One ideal "Square One" lighting design, (so called because if you put everything back to "square one" you will be able to provide good lighting for any basic production ) is to: Divide the stage into the nine basic acting areas ie DSL, DSC, DSR, MSL, MSC, MSR, USL, USC, USR. Allocate two key lights to each area (the McAndless method see lighting links, this takes you to 18 lights from the front. at 45 degrees to the centre of each acting area. Allocate a back light to each acting area, directly behind the centre of each acting area, this takes another six channels You now have an ideal lighting design that uses 24 dimmer channels for individual control of each light. In a usual amateur theatre situation, you will have to parallel lights if you have less dimmer channels. You now need to allow three dimmer channels if you have a cyclorama and additional channels for specials, so the ideal number of channels takes you up to 36, which is three dimmer racks, of 12 channels each, with a channels capacity of 2400 watts. Any questions ?