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Stage Technologies Give RSC a Portable Future
Stage Technologies has supplied the Royal Shakespeare Company's Courtyard Theatre with a portable automation control system. The new 1,000-seat theatre is a temporary venue for the RSC while major renovation works transform their permanent home at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. The temporary venue has been designed as a prototype for the auditorium planned in the permanent theatre which will re-open in 2010. The new thrust-stage brings the audience closer to the actors to re-create the intimacy of the theatres known in Shakespeare's time.
The entire Courtyard Theatre project is estimated to have cost in the region of £6m and following careful planning it is envisaged that a large amount of the equipment and materials will subsequently be reused in other RSC theatres and to support its works in London and on tours in the UK and around the world. This includes the theatre's automation control system, for which Stage Technologies have provided a 34-axis, portable, modular system that facilitates the equipment being configured as one or two systems of varying sizes and so offers the RSC greater flexibility. The system includes 34 BigTow winches, flightcased MaxisID control and 4 Illusionist control consoles.
At the Courtyard Theatre the system will be used to automate part of the RSC's ambitious year of 'The Complete Works' in which they intend to perform every one of Shakespeare's works. Stage Technologies have recently supplied the first instalment of the new automation systems into the Novello Theatre in London. Alan Bartlett, head of construction and technical design for the RSC, commented: "The first installation of our new portable automation system at the Novello was also the most painless and problem free deployment of winches and automation that the RSC has ever undertaken."
28th July 2006
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