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WE WERE ROBBED - A CONCERT

Submitted by Ian Nisbet on Tuesday, 17th May 2011

To the theatre community,
 

This weekend, we arrived at our beloved Fab Factory only to discover that vandals had broken in and taken anything of worth. Nine microphones worth over $1,000 each were taken as well as all our power tools, amplifiers, alcohol, sound, and lighting boards. Basically we have lost over $20,000 worth of equipment that we had accumulated in our nine years of operation.

Whilst the theatre community has been wonderful and very quick to jump to support our cause, we need help in raising money for the long term. Without equipment we will cease to be able to provide the quality productions you deserve. With only six weeks to Spelling Bee we are in desperate need of funds.

It has always been a great and rewarding challenge creating theatre for the community on a tight budget, but this time the challenge is one of the biggest we face.

So we ask all of those who have been:
 

* a punter,
* a player in our performances,
* a lover of quality musical theatre,
* or just someone who wants to see a bit of justice
 

Many of you have enquired as to how you can help so, we have very quickly organised a fund raising event WE WERE ROBBED - A CONCERT to be held on Sunday 5th June featuring some of Fab Nobs favourites, singing past, present, and future show-stopping numbers and a little bit more.

Our theatre friends have donated some fantastic items for us to auction off during the night!!

Tickets are $20.00 each (strictly no BYO food or drink!)
 

Ring us on 0414 367 062 to purchase tickets.
 

Once again we would like to thank the theatre community for rallying behind us and offering their support and well wishes.
 

Fab Nobs Theatre

 

Robbed!

State: 
VIC

Not as black and white as it seems

Submitted by Frank on Wednesday, 18th May 2011.

The comments posted here regarding insurance raise some interesting points. Regarding public liability and volunteer workers insurance, if any theatre company tried to operate without these it would deserve to be sued. However contents insurance is a different ball game: the replacement value for theatrical equipment can be quite high, the amount of equipment to cover on a policy can vary rapidly during the year, and not all equipment can be securely stored when not in use (i.e. it's hanging in the rig). These factors lead to insurance quotes that many companies can not afford when weighed up against spending the cash on physical security measures instead.

This leads me to question what level of internal security the building had if robbers were able to gain access to the most valuable gear the company owned. Back to base alarms aren't that expensive these days (especially if you program it to call you and not a monitoring company), and surely the bio box would be the most secure room in the building?

On the bright side Fab Nobs will have some shiny new gear to play with - and gear is cheaper nowadays than it ever has been. You can get Sennheiser G3 wireless bodypack mics for $650, there are affordable computer based lighting desks which are just as powerful as standalone consoles (and cost 1/10 of the price), and entry-level digital audio desks are coming onto the market with impressive feature sets and comparable pricing to analogue. They may not even need all of the $20k to get back to where they were.

Hope Fab Nobs can recover from this - and install a decent security system at the same time :)

We were robbed

Submitted by Richard on Tuesday, 17th May 2011.

Sorry to hear about Fab nobs, but this leads into the discussion that was held a few weeks ago about management and budgets.
Why no insurance? Surely if you have equipment that is vital to the success of any business (albeit amateur theatre), then the goods should be insured.
How many companies think they can do things by cost cutting different things...like insurance?
Should performers and volunteers demand to sight copies of public liabilty insurances etc?
Thoughts.....

I'm sure they had insurance.

Submitted by Angie on Wednesday, 18th May 2011.

I'm sure they had insurance. There is no way you would own a venue and not have insurance! Presumably fundraising is necessary because by the time the claim is finalised and the cheque comes though it may be too late for their upcoming production.

Keep in mind public liability insurance is different, but I doubt companies cut back on this. It's only $800 a year and you can't hire a venue without it.