Automation specialists Kinesys has 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 is a temporary home for the RSC opening on the site of The Other Place studio theatre and will provide both 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.
The theatre is a box style space with a series of catwalks and four - three short and one long - moving bridges for lighting, sound and other technical positions. The bridges were built and supplied by Total Solutions.
The extended horseshoe thrust-style stage protrudes out into the middle of the auditorium. 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 company 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.
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.
Photo of the interior of The Courtyard Theatre courtesy of Stewart Hemley
Close Window