Prestigious Kensington School Install -  ...Added February 7, 2009

This prestigous private school has recently moved to a fully refurbished premises, and as part of this refurb, we were invited to offer solutions for their school hall, to transform it into a theatre.

The building itself is listed, and there were a number of stringent orders from English Heritage to work around. Coupled to a modest budget, this job soon became a bit of a challenge, but we secretly enjoy that sort of thing.....

Due to imposed fixing limitations on flying lighting bars and the like, we opted for a fully ground supported trussing system, to support the internally wired lighting bars, motorised and manual curtain systems, and the AV projector and screen. A seperate, freestanding, modular, stage decking system was also employed, to allow for the stage to be re-configured to suit the sort of production the school were stageing.

The ground support structure has four 4.2m legs, with the "roof" measuring 6m front to back, 6.7m width across the back, and 8.3m width across the front. This structure has 2 internally wired lighting bars with DMX dimmer backs bolted on top for the lighing. A second, smaller, ground support structure is mounted further back in the room, with an internally wired lighting bar and DMX dim pack for the profiles.

Front view of the structure and stage, before the drapes were hung.

The stage is made up from 13 8'x4' and 3 4'x4' stage decks sitting on 800mm long legs, along with 3 sets of stairs, and a complete barrier system around its edge. For daily use, the front five sheets are stored on castors under the stage. For productions these are quickly deployed to extend the stage torwards the audience, locked together using a novel built in locking system.

The part built stage and ground support structure

The front main drapes are on a motorised track system, with an upstage motor. The rear drapes are on a hand pully, with the other drapes being permanantly fixed. All are fire-proof.

The Motor and Upstage pulley system for the motorised curtains.

The projector and screen are also mounted to the main ground support, with a PC VGA input on stage, and a composite video input at two further locations around the room. The screen is electric, working by IR remote control to raise and lower it.

Portable PA Rack

The sound system is mounted in a wheeled rack, and can patch into the system in two different locations, as can the DMX twin preset lighting desk. The sound system features four shure UHF radio microphones, running through a compact desk, and a 1KW power amp. This in turn feeds four speakers in the auditorium, colour matched to the walls, as are their powerdrive brackets. All system cabling is also in white, but carefully hidden from view.

The Stage, in "compact" mode, a further 5 8'x4' sections fit on the front to extend the stage forwards into the audience.

 The build went smoothly, and the job kept to schedule and budget.