070 VENUE


as ‘hell’) and a seven metre high fly tower (heaven). Because of the riverside location, Burro Happold instigated measures to ensure that the design not only compensates for a one in 100 year flood scenario, but also uses an even more severe benchmark based on the floods of Easter 1998. The adjacent Swan Theatre was, in 1986, built in place of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, which was destroyed by fire in 1926. During the RST’s upgrade, the Swan Theatre received a decorative refurbishment and upgrade to its technical facilities. It is the affectionate regard that it and its thrust stage are held in by both spectator and performer, which inspired the decision to re-mould the RST into the same configuration. A series of new public spaces have been created in the areas peripheral to the RST, which answer the RSC’s desire for a more consumer-friendly building. The 36 metre high tower marks the new entrance, and offers people the opportunity to visit the viewing platform at 32 metres. From here they can view Shakespeare’s hometown, the place where he was born, the church in which he was married and where he was buried. The tower was constructed from thick, load-bearing walls around a central concrete shaft, and uses handmade bricks from the Forest of Dean. The idea of the tower is for people to descend from the top, which offers opportunities to visit the new rooftop restaurant, café and bars, before arriving at the colonnade, where entrances to the theatres, box office and shop are found. All of which conspire to enhance the building’s appeal and in turn its commercial potency. With the commercial stakes raised and the most significant original features incorporated into the new design, the RST would seem to have moved forwards with bold, but measured steps. Ultimately, however, it is the success of the main auditorium that will draw the deciding vote. “The brief was to create a performance environment that Shakespeare himself might have recognised, and at the same time comfortably accommodate 1,000 people around the thrust stage,” revealed Charcoalblue’s Design Director, Gavin Green. “Our designs for the prototype Courtyard, which provided a temporary home for the RSC while the main house was redeveloped, helped inform the new theatre design. Nevertheless, we re-examined and re-tested every part of the Courtyard design for the new RST.” Members of the RSC were focused on what they wanted, as Charcoalblue’s Senior Consultant Gavin Owen explained: “The brief from our point of view has been written by the client as we’ve gone along and was pretty much replicate what they need to do. So there’s a full, wired infrastructure for lighting, sound and stage automation. “There’s sine wave dimming throughout the RST but not within the Swan, which was more a value engineering decision, rather than anything design-led. The RST has ETC sine wave dimming throughout, and distributed Swisson dimming. There is an Ethernet


www.mondodr.com


“We wanted to move away from the 19th Century proscenium ‘picture


frame’ to a theatre which celebrates interaction.” - Michael Boyd


and DMX wired infrastructure. And control comes through the MA Lighting grandMA Light 2 network. They’ve got three grandMA Light 2’s in each venue - one running as a main desk, one running as a back-up and the third one running as a production desk, so they have one set up in the stalls when they’re setting up shows, and they don’t have to then lift the desk back into the control room, they can just pack it away locally. They then supplement that with a series of onPC around the space. And have an offline editing station in their office, which links to both theatres.” Each venue has an MA Lighting NPU (Network Processing Unit) linking Ethernet and DMX, whilst the 10 MA Lighting 2Port Node onPC can roam wherever they are needed for control. A total of 22 Swisson RDM DMX splitters occupy the two theatres, eight in the Swan and the remainder in the RST. One of the real issues thrown up by the thrust stage configuration was how to effectively fly lighting, as the three-dimensional performance area means a lack of bar flying opportunities. Gavin Owen explained: “The biggest challenge from a lighting point of view is how you get lights above a thrust stage and around the thrust stage, which is where the development of the RSC Lightlock came into it.” Whilst exploring the lighting design options, the RSC’s Head of Lighting Vince Herbert recalled some previous work which eventually led to the Lightlock, as he revealed: “I started working on this concept when we were working on the refurbishment of the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester several years ago. The idea was to put moving lights onto television pantographs so that we could vary the angle of the lighting within cues and make them much easier to maintain. “When we started talking about the RSC’s auditorium designs for the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Flip Tanner (the Technical


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