Turning a Gym Into a Concert Hall: Part 2

My school does not have a stage, so all performances must take place in the gym. There's not much I can do about the acoustics, but I try my best to improve the aesthetics.  In a previous post, I shared pictures of our stage set-up for the Christmas concert. These pictures in this post are of the stage set-up from our Spring concert.

A couple years ago, PTO raised funds to purchase 12 Wenger Flip Forms. I am very thankful for their support of the arts! These are enough to provide a stage for my Orff instruments and risers for my Choir. At Christmas, I only used 3 sections for the Choir and 6 for the Orff Ensemble. I welcomed many new members to both groups in January, so in this picture you see 4 sections for the Choir and 8 sections for the Orff Ensemble.When the drama club performs, they use all the Flip Forms to form a larger stage. I have metal folding risers in storage if the choir is performing with the drama club for a musical.

Maintenance installed a tension wire across the back side of the gym. 

Our background is a black curtain comprised of 4 king size flat bed sheets sewn together. At the top of the sheets, there are button holes and we hang the curtain with index card rings.

To decorate the back drop at Christmas, I hung paper snowflakes and snowflake ornaments.

For the spring concert, I purchased 3-dimensional plastic music notes from a local novelty store. These can also be purchased online at a variety of stores with a range of $5-7 dollars per package. Each package contains one treble clef, 2 quarter notes, 2 eighth notes, and 2 pairs of sixteenth notes. I purchased 2 packages. The notes are black and I had a black background, so I spray painted them silver and then added some multicolored glitter to make them sparkle and shine.

I attached the notes to the backdrop with string and safety pins. This allowed the notes to remain in place if the gym teacher needed to slide the curtain out of the way.

If you also have to perform in a gym, I would love to see how you transform your space into a performance hall. You may follow this link to Facebook to add your pictures.