Rehearsals restart in September, the set gets built in a member’s garage through October, and drama society van hire is how it reaches a stage it has never stood on. Scenery flats are long, awkward and fragile in exactly the ways a car cannot accommodate. A booking for van hire in Warrington at our Tilley Street depot means the get in happens in one movement rather than six.
What Drama Society Van Hire Has to Move
A production is more than its set. There are flats and rostra, a props table’s worth of small items that must not be lost, costumes on rails that crease if they are folded, lanterns and stands, a sound rack, cables and the tools to put it all together. Most of it lives in three different places between productions, which is why the get in is a logistics exercise before it is a theatrical one.
The flats are the constraint. A standard scenery flat is tall and thin, and once you start tilting it to fit a vehicle you are risking the canvas, the frame and the paint job somebody spent three weekends on.
Drama Society Van Hire for Scenery Flats
The extra long wheelbase van is the vehicle that makes this straightforward. A 4.3 metre load length takes full height flats lying flat on the floor, stacked face to face with blankets between them, rather than standing on edge where they flex and rub. Rostra and heavy timber go underneath, painted surfaces go on top, and nothing has to be carried diagonally through a doorway on the way in.
All our vans are 3.5 tonnes gross vehicle weight or under and drive on a standard category B car licence, so any member with a full licence can be the driver.
Costumes, Props and the Small Items
Costumes travel on rails or in wardrobe boxes, never in bin bags, and they want to be the last thing in and the first thing out so they are hanging before anyone needs them. Props go in labelled crates by scene, not by size, because the props table is set by scene and anyone searching three crates for a letter opener during a technical rehearsal will remember it for years.
Photograph the props table before the production ends. It is the quickest inventory anyone will ever make, and it is what stops the next drama society van hire starting with an argument about who had the candlesticks.
Lighting, Sound and the Technical Get In
Lanterns are heavier than they look and the lenses are the expensive part, so they travel in flight cases or crates with padding rather than loose in a box with the cables. Cable drums go on the floor where they cannot roll into anything, and the sound rack travels upright and strapped. The advice in our guide to hiring a van for touring musicians and bands applies almost line for line to a society moving its own technical kit.
Load the technical items first if the get in starts with the rig, which it usually does, because a lighting crew standing about waiting for a van to be unpacked in the wrong order loses the whole evening.
Venue Access and the Get In Window
Community venues and school halls rarely have a loading dock, and the get in window is often a single evening between a hall booking and a rehearsal. Find out where the van can stand, how far the carry is, and whether the double doors at the back actually open, because a surprising number of them are bolted shut and nobody knows where the key is. Societies rehearsing around Birchwood and the eastern side of town usually plan an evening get in, and van hire Birchwood bookings for productions are typically arranged across a full week.
Send one person ahead to open doors and hold the lift. It saves more time than an extra pair of hands on the van.
The Get Out and the Strike
The strike happens late on the last night with a tired cast and a hall that must be clear by morning. Keep the vehicle until the Monday rather than trying to return it on the Sunday, load the flats in the order they will be stored rather than the order they come off the stage, and decide before the strike what is being kept and what is being broken up. A set nobody has decided about ends up back in the garage for another year.
Short term and long term hire are both available, which suits a society needing a vehicle across a production week.
Booking Around the Production Week
We are open Monday to Saturday from 8am to 4pm and closed on Sunday, so a Saturday collection covers a Sunday get in and the van is yours through the run. Bring a photocard licence and a DVLA check code for whoever is named on the booking, tell us if the driver changes between the get in and the strike, and there is no deposit required on most vehicles. Free secure parking on site means a member can leave a car here for the week.
Book as soon as the venue dates are confirmed. Pantomime season fills the diary faster than anything else in the autumn.
Tell us the venue, the production week and the size of the set and we will put the right vehicle aside. Call the depot on 01925 396 222 to arrange drama society van hire for the season ahead.
