With the official public opening of the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST) on November 24, Stage Electrics has completed its five-year-long role at the technical heart of this visionary transformation project.The transformation was designed to create, in artistic director Michael Boyd’s words, “the best theatre in the world to perform the works of Shakespeare”. It involved a massive reconstruction that created a brand new RST auditorium with a thrust stage and embraced the adjacent Swan Theatre, with a colonnade connecting the two and extensively upgraded public facilities throughout.

Stage Electrics, as specialist theatre contractor and technical coordinator, was contracted to provide and install the Theatre Electrics Package, including every electrical, audio and lighting system within both the RST itself and the Swan Theatre.

Jonathan Porter Goff, project manager for Stage Electrics, comments: “Our work began by taking the basic designs from theatre consultants Charcoalblue, engineers Buro Happold and architects Bennetts Associates, and then providing the detailed designs for installation.”

Stage Electrics had begun work with the RSC some five years ago, initially on the Courtyard Theatre, which was designed as both a temporary replacement for the original RST during its transformation, and a proving ground for new design concepts including the large thrust stage. Having also worked on the RSC’s Chapel Lane offices Stage Electrics was then contracted for the transformation of the RST.

The company’s CAD department, based at the Bristol main office and headed by Giles Philips, modelled the building in 3D to direct the placement of each piece of trunking and facility panel, and the numerous audio, lighting, video, motion control, comms and relay networks – a total of some 330 miles of cable. From that, the team produced an AutoCAD model of the entire containment infrastructure to determine precisely how it would fit the fabric of the building, amid the seating, steelwork and concrete.

Porter Goff said of the CAD department’s work: “It was a big tool in terms of resolving clashes before it got to the stage of installing containment onsite. It solved all sorts of problems and allowed the client to see for themselves, and all of us to work out whether they could fly things past or even safely walk past it. “

Stage Electrics also supplied the house lighting (co-designed with the RSC) and all stage lighting, auditorium sound, site-wide communications and audio-video paging/relay system. As technical co-ordinators its team worked with key suppliers Delstar (under-stage engineering) and Trekwerk (over-stage engineering), for the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC)’s Project Team headed by project director Peter Wilson OBE, deputy project director Simon Harper and project coordinator Flip Tanner.

The installation included the provision of paging and relay systems, using facilities panels custom fabricated in house by Stage Electrics, incorporating both audio and video relay, enabling both staff and cast to keep abreast of each performance.

On top of the manufacture and population of over 600 custom facility panels, Stage Electrics’ in-house manufacturing department produced a number of bespoke solutions including stage managers’ desks, custom house light fittings and purpose designed Mains Distribution units.

FOH audio systems supplied and installed by Stage Electrics, designed principally for surround sound effects and underscore music, are controlled by a DiGiCo SD7T console, chosen by RSC head of sound Jeremy Dunn for its sonic transparency and powerful snapshot facilities. The PA comprises a largely self-powered Meyer system including 11 M’elodie curvilinear array loudspeakers and six UPM-2Ps, with 56 UPM-1P compact full-range units. Dunn comments: “It was very important for us that it wasn’t noisily fan-cooled, but quiet, so we don’t create any noise in that acoustic environment.” These are supplemented by a delay system of 40 d&b audiotechnik E0s, driven by eight d&b D6 amplifiers running remote network software.

Providing the RST and Swan with an accomplished resource for sound effects and musical soundtrack creation are the in-house Dubbing Room and Recording Studio. The Dubbing Room is equipped with Genelec monitoring, Tascam and Fostex CD/CDR machines, and Apple Mac Quad Core Xeon 6 tower running Qlab Pro show control software. The Music Studio Control Room boasts the same Apple Mac tower / Qlab Pro software setup, along with a dedicated FX rack and extensive AES/EBU patching.

Stage Electrics also worked with Ampetronic to install and commission induction loop systems for the RST and Swan, following its successful introduction at the temporary Courtyard Theatre.

Lighting was very much a team effort, with the RSC’s head of lighting, Vince Herbert, working closely with Trekwerk to design the 30 unique lighting clusters, flown from Trekwerk-designed dual line hoists, powered by a 600V DC bus featuring regenerative technology. Motion control is provided by a Trekwerk console running custom 3D software which also feeds positional data via ArtNet to the Grand MA 2 lighting controller – itself chosen by the RST lighting team after a year-long trial against another model. The system’s major benefit, says Herbert, is that lighting clusters can be lowered individually to stage level for maintenance, thus greatly improving safety and, he adds: “once you have the health and safety right, the art can follow” – a reference to the unique creative flexibility provide by the 30 clusters, which can be moved into 53 positions.

The clusters were equipped by Stage Electrics with Swisson Dimming and a pair of moving lights from a stock of Martin TW1s, Vari