Our main house, a traditional proscenium stage with full-height fly tower, small apron / forestage, unraked.
It has a capacity of 250 in the stalls and 100 in the balcony.
There is no restricted view, although there is a (slightly annoying) glass barrier on the front of the balcony to dissuade audience members hoping to crowd-surf on those in the stalls!
Stalls Rows A-C can be removed in blocks of three, however much like things going up and down, things removed have to be placed somewhere else; in this case, on the stage itself, either in the wings or behind the blacks in the US storage area which is usually full already.
For the avoidance of doubt, those measurements mean if your show is bigger than that, then it won’t fit. Apologies to those already fully aware the average Theatre Techie is unable to alter the laws of physics, but you’re speaking to someone who once helped build a proscenium arch set-piece which was so huge it was hidden from the audience behind our actual proscenium arch.
No, that’s not a typo. Yes, you have less than a metre of space in the SL wing. And that includes space for the legs, a pile of stage weights, a wall-mounted heater, and various other important bits and bobs which get in the way.
Please note: the full floor area (including wings) is comprised of a semi-sprung natural wood flooring – which means no screwing into it, no painting it, no using Tesco own-brand gaffer – but above all it means it is not black.
Stage-level crossover is behind the stage wall, accessed through doors USR and USL.
Grid height: 12m
LX trim height: 6m
A combination of double-purchase counterweight bars and three-line hemp bars.
Operated from the SR fly floor (including the house tabs, which means the DSM at stage level can’t “just do that as well”).
Please note: it should come as no surprise to learn most of our CW bars are permanently rigged with extremely heavy theatrical drapes or even heavier lighting equipment.
Most of our hemp bars are free, but please note the majority of available bars are in the MS area.
Owing to many peculiar decisions (early-80s, local council, budgetary), one of the historical issues we can’t get around is the limit on the number of CW weights available – our in-house LX rig leaves us with about a dozen spare. Any toured equipment to be rigged (other than a few lanterns here and there) will usually require our lanterns to be derigged – and there is nowhere else to store those other than at stage level, either in the wings or in the US storage area which is usually… you get the idea.
Conventionals
90 x 2.3K Strand dimmers, distributed as follows:
Lantern stocks
Small selection irises
Small selection Rosco gobos & holders, B-size only
Small selection Lee colour
Small selection TRS & grelcos
LEDs
Overhead we have a permanently fixed rig of 12 x Chauvet Colorado, 2 Quad Zoom LEDs, complemented by 2 additional units on our auditorium perches. 3 x Quads per LX bar, and we rig your design around them. Please refer to the Fixed Rig positions plan for more information.
Cyclorama lights are 7 x Chauvet Colorado Batten 144s, fixed and hard-wired on CW9.
Side-lights are 6 x Chauvet Ovation P56s, a semi-fixed rig.
Uplighters are 5 x Chauvet Ovation Cyc 1s, we usually have 2 fixed in place uplighting the prosc’.
FOH
We are a fixed FOH LX venue (for clarification, that just means the lanterns stay where they are and do not get re-rigged – it doesn’t mean they can’t be refocused, although it is tricky and time-consuming accessing the top of the auditorium perches)
Bridge – our main position. No, it is not an advance bar. Yes, the angle is pretty steep. You get 6 x Source 4 15/30s and 4 x Strand SL 15/32s, hung alternatively and mirrored from centre
Balcony bar – 2 x Lito PCs used as tab warmers, with 2 extra dimmer sockets for additional fixtures. Please note the lenses of the lanterns at this position are very much at performer eye-level
Auditorium perches – on our auditorium walls, you get a 15/32 at the top, a fresnel, our FOH LED Quads, a basic moving light, and another fresnel, mirrored across
Side-lights
What we use gets called many things – an up-down bar, a side-light bar, side bars – but what they are not is side-light booms. We don’t have any. No boom bases, no booms themselves, no boom arms. What it is is a bar running US-DS in the wings, lanterns are rigged at just over head-height for obvious reasons (so lens-height is about 2m), you get 2 conventionals per bay, 3 bays per side. Then shins on the deck on H-stands. That totals 18 circuits, which matches the number of dips we have funnily enough.
However, running a load of lanterns blasting out 1000s of watts is possibly not something we should be encouraging in the current world of endangered furry things and rising temperatures, so the house rig uses Chauvet Ovation P56s – 1 lantern per bay and a multitude of colours. (And a low-end dimmer curve which goes from blackout to nuclear sunset in a single percentage, but you knew that already.)
Houselights
GDS ArcSystem wireless LEDs, controlled by presets on dedicated control panels next to the LX desk and DSR
These proved to be a great improvement a number of years ago, and still manage to vaguely behave themselves most of the time, despite them now having to operate in an endless swamp of 2.4GHz devices from the audience – which is of course the frequency band the system uses
Control
ETC Congo Jr with fader wing. Stop laughing. We like it.
Operated from the Control Room at the back of the balcony only
Runs Cobalt 7.3.1. Rigger’s remote (programmable keyboard) DSR. 2 universes maximum
Offline Cobalt software for importing new fixture profiles
Also used for transferring ETC showfiles recorded on EOS desks – but please note, there is no such thing as part cues on a Congo, and there is no such thing as zero, so those will need manually adjusting
Common response to my informing people of the make and model of our desk: “Er, I’ll probably just use our Nomad.”
Basic vocal reinforcement / playback PA, suitable for theatre, spoken word and the occasional folk gig. Bigger or more complex requirements usually result in equipment being hired in.
PA:
Basic mic package:
Small selection Sennheiser lavalier mics:
Control
Allen & Heath Avantis with GX4816 stagebox
Operated from the Control Room at the back of the balcony, or rear of stalls on request
Avantis MixPad iPad remote
USR only
3 x 63A singles OR 1 x 63A 3-phase
Small selection power distribution 32A / 16A / 13A
Panasonic PT-DW640 DLP 6000L projector, HDMI input only, tie-lines at DSR and the Control Room only, permanently rigged FOH on our balcony bar.
Sony PHZ50 5000L projector, HDMI input only, usually installed in the Studio but used on stage when rear projection is necessary.
AV Stumpfl 16 x 9’ front projection screen, permanently rigged on CW3, can not be used for rear projection.
Draper 12 x 9’ fast-fold free-standing rear projection screen, when rear projection on stage is necessary – please note the position of the screen is roughly the same, ie CW3.
SM
Bastard prompt position (including all in-house control cable termination / multicores / DMX splitters).
Antique Sound Logic stage management station, fully installed and working until recently. After professional building contractors finished with it, we are left with the following limited SM infrastructure:
As our comms packs now need to be daisychained, their positions are limited – the Control Room, DSR, SR flys and rear of stalls
FOH Tannoy unaffected
Staging
Drum riser – black, 8 x 6 x 1’
Old-school stage blocks – black (or at least they were once), 10 x 60 x 60 x 38cm
No follow-spot
Tallescope 50518
Zarges 8-rung
Zarges 6-rung
FlexStep wheelchair lift from Stage Door level to stage level
There is an accessible WC at Stage Door level – we can prepare the room as a temporary dressing room on request.
More information about accessibility for the rest of the building can be found on our accessibility pages here.
2.25 x 2.9m blue dock doors around the back of the building (turn into St Mary’s Wynd) leading directly onto stage USR, however they’re 5’ up in the air and we do not have a ramp. There is a narrow alley leading up to the loading bay where touring vehicles can be left. W3Ws is roughly here.
Level access is down the lane between us and the church, through the auditorium fire exit just off DSL (standard width double-doors). There is sometimes space to leave smaller production vehicles on our side of the lane. W3Ws roughly here.
More information about this can be found in our Venue Guide.
Please note we do not have proper parking facilities – asides from the areas indicated for get-in / load-in vehicles, we only have a small staff car park at the base of the fly tower. W3Ws roughly here.
More information about parking can be found on our Getting Here pages.