For The Far Pavilions, award winning set designer Lez Brotherston had to create sets which took the action from the snow-capped Himalayas to the hot and dusty deserts of Rajasthan. A raked triple concentric revolve - the three sections of which can move simultaneously, in different directions and at a different angle - is used to create the peaks of the Himalayas, while the lavish set also employs a total of 11 flying pieces.
Extensive use is also made of a revolve for the many scene changes in Billy Elliot. Here, another award winner designer, Ian MacNeil, takes the audience from Billy's home, through the demonstrations of the 1984 miners' strike and on to the stage of London's Royal Opera House. Billy's 4m tall house comes up through the stage's main trap door on a hydraulic lift, revolving - and, on occasions, with Billy dancing up and down the stairs - as it appears, so the control has to be absolutely smooth. Billy's bedroom is another device which appears through a trap within the main trap door. AVW provides the controls for these and two other lifts - the kitchen table and the pit - four stage wagons and two side and two rear walls, which have to meet with absolute accuracy. In order to get the side walls off or on stage, the side lighting bars have to be lifted and then quickly lowered back into place. These specially strengthened bars each weigh two tons, and have a 40kW motor driving them. Moving at a speed of 2m a second, controlled by Impressario, the travel on these massive lighting bars has to be 100% accurate. Other flying pieces on Billy Elliot include the proscenium arch of the Royal Opera House, plus the pit gates and footlights.
For big productions such as these, adding and deleting cues is easy with Impressario 2005, which has a generous 5,000 programmable cue capacity with two-digit point cues. It also offers the ability to control up to 255 pieces of scenery and rigging simultaneously, with group control and synchronisation of multiple motors and hydraulics. As well as upgraded software, the Impressario console has been redesigned to give a sleeker, more streamlined look, while retaining the practicality and intuitiveness for which it is renowned. Impressario won the prestigious Product of the Year in the engineering category at the 2002 ABTT show and, since its launch in 1999, has become the automation system of choice for many leading London and regional theatres.
(Lee Baldock)
