L-R: Jake Wiltshire of The Royal Academy of Music, Roger Hennigan of White Light, Mark White of ETC, Mark Bradbrook of White Light
Fly floor at the Royal Academy of Music
L-R: Mark White, Mark Bradbrook, Hansjorg Schmidt of Goldsmiths College, Roger Hennigan
New dimmers at the QEII Conference Centre
The Royal Academy of Music's Sir Jack Lyons Theatre is a versatile two-hundred seat theatre in the Academy's Marleybone Road home, used for opera and musical theatre productions and also as a teaching room. White Light Projects was brought in as part of the venue's ongoing upgrade and improvement programme. Discussions between the theatre's technician Jake Wiltshire and White Light's Technical Sales Manager Roger Hennigan led to a project to replace the theatre's ageing and increasingly unreliable dimmers, re-wire the lighting system, replace plugging boxes and internally-wired bars and also make provision for the increasing number of shows that bring in scrollers or moving lights by providing DMX outlets around the venue.
With the installation complete, the Sir Jack Lyons Theatre now has 144 ways of ETC Sensor dimming, new Andolite outlet boxes on the flyfloor and at stage level featuring both Socapex and 15A outlets, and new internally wired bars overhead, these now ladderbeam-style for added rigidity. The plugging boxes and internally wired bars also carry Ethercon outlets for distribution of Ethernet lighting data or, via adapters, standard DMX512 data. The Ethercon outlets are fed from an XTBA DMX splitter located in the dimmer room. Jake Wiltshire has pronounced himself "delighted" with the installation which, by adding additional dimming and reducing the amount of outlet pairing around the theatre should considerably simplify the task of putting large shows into the theatre.
A similar upgrade of facilities has taken place in the theatre at Goldsmiths College in south-east London, an unusual venue featuring a large conventional stage area behind a deeply thrust forestage. Requiring urgent attention were the overhead lighting grid that had been added to repeatedly over time and was still wired largely in five-amp sockets, and another ageing dimmer installation. In consultation with the theatre's Hansjorg Schmidt, White Light Projects replaced the entire lighting grid with a new grid of internally wired bars fitted with 16A outlets and also featuring DMX outlets to simplify the connection of scrollers or moving lights. New flown internally wired bars were also provided upstage. The theatre's old mains patch has been removed; the outlets are hard-wired back to 120 ways of ETC Sensor dimming, these two racks installed in a new location at the rear of the stage. New socket boxes, again by Andolite, have also been installed at stage level, and DMX distribution is again through XTBA DMX splitters.
Finally at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in Westminster, White Light Projects were brought in to replace the dimming system and install new overhead Socapex outlets in the venue's Churchill Auditorium to simplify the task of installing conference lighting rigs. Limited space in the dimmer room meant that ETC SmartPack dimmers were chosen; 48 way of dimming were installed feeding through a new patch bay that then feeds out through newly installed trunking to Socapex outlets distributed along the roof of the room. The QEII's Derek Chalmers is very pleased with the new installation and, having seen the benefits it offers, is already discussing further additions to the system!
"All three of these projects represent our approach to helping customers," comments Roger Hennigan. "In each case they knew roughly what they wanted to achieve, but were also open to suggestions about useful extras, such as DMX distribution, that they might not have thought of. And they were happy to work with us on the actual equipment to be used to ensure they got as much as possible for their money. As a result, and thanks to the hard work of Mark Bradbrook and his team who carried out all three installations in a very short space of time, all now have fantastic new systems that are safer, tidier and will make their work in getting shows on much, much easier!"