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Kinesys in the Courtyard
Automation specialists Kinesys have supplied the control system for a series of moving bridges in the Royal Shakespeare Company's new Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon.
The Courtyard Theatre is a temporary home for the RSC opening on the site of The Other Place studio theatre. The venue will provide additional performance space during The Complete Works festival, and the main performance space while the RSC transforms its flagship theatre in the town after April 2007.
Kinesys was asked to deal with the specialist area of automation and control by Total Solutions, who were contracted to construct and supply the bridges. Dave Weatherhead co-ordinated the operation for Kinesys, working with Mervyn Thomas from TSG. The automation system itself was specified by the project's theatre consultants, Charcoalblue, as part of an overall system of moving and fixed bridges.
The theatre is a box style space with a series of catwalks and four (three short and one long) moving brides for lighting, sound and other technical positions. It's possible to access the moving elements via the fixed bridges.
The extended horseshoe thrust style stage protrudes out into the middle of the auditorium, and above this sit the three shorter moving bridges, each suspended and moved by four Verlinde Stage Maker hoists. The longer fourth bridge is further upstage, traversing the extended stage width at that point, and suspended on eight motors.
Kinesys provided all necessary cabling, mains distribution, interface units and hoist controllers. Each bridge has its own pendant control located adjacent to it, offering the main 'raise' and 'lower' buttons as well as enable keyswitch and emergency stop. "The brief was to keep things as straightforward as possible," says Weatherhead.
Kinesys also built a 24-channel general purpose pendant allowing one-at-a-time movement of any of the motors.
An Emergency Stop system links all the Kinesys elements together with the powered flying winches. Additionally, Kinesys designed and built an interface unit to detect if any of the motors stop, in the event of which power to all other units on that bridge would automatically be cut.
Another major criteria was that the system had to be re-usable and have the potential to be removed in five years time - The Courtyard Theatre’s projected lifetime - and used elsewhere. It’s therefore designed as a modular system with standard length cables, so its components can be broken down and used either on tour, in workshops or in any other relevant application at a future date.
The Kinesys system also packs down neatly into three flight cases. Two 8U racks house the control for the long, eight motor, bridge and the main Array PD power distribution unit while a 22U rack contains the remaining hoist controllers, emergency stop system, and additional control interfaces.
photos by Stewart Hemley
4th July 2006
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