Monday 15 August 2011

All Lit Up (part 1)

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed a short break in Hall for Cornwall’s programme of shows this month. This isn’t (contrary to rumour) because crew have headed en masse to Perranporth beach! In fact, they are working harder then ever during our regular maintenance period – one of the busiest times of year for them.


One of the tasks being undertaken is to clean and check ALL of the theatre’s lighting stock. This is no small task – each lighting unit is taken apart and cleaned before being PAT tested.



Another task the crew have been busy with has been to shorten the steel wires on all 35 fly bars. This involved clearing them of all lantern stock before manually adjusting each one. The adjustment means that when lowered they are at a better height for working on. They also rise higher in the fly tower to give us additional clearance (something that comes in very useful when touring companies bring sets designed for larger venues!).

I snapped a few pictures of the bars during maintenance. It’s very rare indeed to see them all lowered and clear like this.

Another development has been updating of the theatre house lights. The new lights are LED powered and offer significant power efficiency savings when compared to the old lights. There’s certainly no loss of light as a result – the new units appeared to be very bright when I went into the auditorium last week.

Alongside the highly visible building renovation and maintenance work, these types of maintenance jobs are a vital part of keeping the theatre functioning efficiently and ensuring ongoing improvements. Work being undertaken is part-funded by the Theatre Fund payments with ticket sales. As well as safety and maintenance we are investing in lighting that is more efficient with a view to reducing our operating costs as well as our carbon footprint.

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