A lot of venues, especially school based, have a standard lighting rig installed. The beauty of this is that you can turn on some nicely focused lighting for simple shows and presentations. So it usually consists of 3 or 4 washes on stage and a set of specials. This gives you some versatility.But the question is with the specials is if you intend to spread them evenly across the stage – how do you spread them out? Do you have an even Number across the stage and an even number from front to back?

But what is the most common place people stand on stage? – that’s right Centre stage. Now with 4 lights across the front there is not a light actually focused on centre. Now someone stands to one side of centre it can look unbalanced. So I think the best way to layout a regular grid of specials is to use odd numbers – like 3 or 5. This gives you a centre special, where most people gravitate to. In fact having odd numbers in both directions gives you a  downstage centre and a mid stage centre. These are the two most common positions people gravitate to.In fact 5 is often the most practical.

Below is a rough idea of 6 specials on a stage to give you a visual of what I am talking about.

And remember have fun, ask questions and experiment.