Job Description

Hayesfield Performing Arts Centre

Enlightened Lighting carried out a remarkable technical installation in a new £9.5m performing arts facility at Hayesfield Girls’ School in Bath — incorporating well over 100 JBL loudspeakers into a fully-integrated audio visual design, a contract worth in excess of £200,000. The space will enable the school to offer courses in Stage Design and Management as well as Music Production. “Performance and creativity are key to students' learning and these new facilities enable this to happen,” stated head teacher, Erica Draisey.

The centre revolves around the 330 seat Roper Theatre auditorium, and here Enlightened specified JBL VRX928 constant curvature arrays, four enclosures a side, along with a single JBL VRX915S 15in sub — driven by Crown XTi amps (three Crown XTi 2000 and XTi 1000). Two JBL AC18/95 compact stage monitors are flown behind the main array. The auditorium’s fully-featured sound and lighting control booth includes a pair of JBL LSR4328P reference monitors and patchable multicore system to enable the FOH desk to be relocated to the auditorium. The installation team received strong technical support from Sound Technology, the Harman Professional distributors for the UK and Eire, who provided EASE modeling plots for an auditorium with a reverberation time close to 2 secs, which favours classical recitals.

Enlightened’s task was to supply a fully-integrated sound and lighting package, including recording, broadcast and network facilities. The installation has been designed so that any sound source can be routed to any of the zones in the building via the DSP. There is a clean feed to the Soundcraft Ghost console in a separate music production room alongside further JBL LSR4328P reference monitors, with recording and archiving onto an RME hard disk. The main 180-seat refectory/restaurant is served by no fewer than 42 JBL Control 47LP low impedance ceiling speakers and a total of 50 Control 24CT Micro ceiling speakers on a distributed system perform show relay and paging duties, as well as broadcasting sound in the corridors, toilets and changing rooms. Another 12 JBL Control 25CT, in mono configuration are found in the Learning Resource Centre and a further five in the theatre’s Green Room. Meanwhile, over in the Music Department the playback system includes JBL AC 18/95 full range enclosures, supplemented by a single JBL ASB6112 subwoofer, while four JBL Control 47LP ceiling speakers provide rear fill. A number of ensemble and practice rooms have also been equipped with relay speakers.

Enlightened also installed a full lighting grid, with DMX patch and presenter patch, 96 ways of dimming and 24 non-dim, There’s a DMX patch, a presenter patch. “Everything is designed to be completely intuitive”. Specialising in the educational sector, cinemas and theatres, this was unquestionably the largest, and most satisfying contract undertaken by Enlightened Lighting in 2011. Certainly, the implementation had the approval of the school’s head teacher. After the work was commissioned, Erica Draisey thanked the Enlightened team “for bringing sanity and expertise to the project.”

Categories: 
Theatre
Education
Categories 2: