Illuminating Theatrical Ideas
The Madeleine Centre is a brand new, fully functioning performing arts centre at Genazzano College’s Kew campus. The venue incorporates a series of classrooms, drama rooms and gallery spaces that supplement the centre’s main attraction; The impressive Montagner Auditorium. The 456 seat auditorium and the accompanying rooms are already heavily used by the school each day, playing host to drama and theatre studies, music classes, band rehearsals, meetings, assemblies, seminars, concerts, recitals and theatre productions.
The School’s Business Manager Mark Glover was heavily involved in the coordination process of the construction, and was just as excited as the rest of the staff and students when the venue opened its doors. “The build up to the opening of the Madeleine Centre was most exciting. The new building was the first major construction at the College in 11 years and there was a great deal of anticipation and excitement leading to the grand opening.”
Lightmoves were contracted to supply and install the Theatrical Lighting, Sound and Lighting Control packages for the new artistic hub.
LIGHTING
Lightmoves decked out the stage lighting rig with a collection of Philips Selecon fixtures. A series of 600w, 800w and 1000w Profile 
Spots create flexibility, while the Fresnels give superb stage wash. The cyclorama is lit using HUI cyc lights and LUI cyc lights, while MultiPARs round out the stage lights. Two Selecon Followspot’s sit on a balcony above the bio box.
LSC products were used for the stage lighting control, with a MAXIM console and one hundred and twenty channels of LSC EKO 2500w Dimmers. Theatre Consultant Arup chose a hard wired dimmer system, removing the need to have a patch panel, giving the venue the ability to load every stage lighting outlet up to 2500W at the same time.
SOUND
The Montagner auditorium features a high ceiling and curved walls, which left minimal space in which to mount a speaker system. A JBL VRX line array was chosen given its small footprint and focussed output. Removable front fill speakers can be added when the orchestra pit is raised and additional seating is installed. The sound is controlled via a Soundcraft GB4 board.
The venue features a sixteen zone, twenty-input back and front of house paging system. This allows for a variety of signals including CD, radio, program relay and paging microphones to be routed to all parts of the building, and the ability to control this from a number of remote panels. The school’s existing paging system was integrated into this new system using a Mediamatrix CAB Nion interface, which allows the front office to make announcements into any of the many classrooms.
LIGHTING CONTROL
A Philips Dynalite system is responsible for the Lighting Control of the whole venue. The system is a little unusual for this type of installation, as all areas of control auditorium house lights, backstage lights, white and blue work lights and front of house lights - have been integrated on the one control system. This way, one-button push can ensure all lighting is turned off as the last person leaves the venue.
During a performance, a button in the Bio Box can select ‘performance mode’ which automatically disables certain panels and locks out lighting that may adversely affect the performance.
The Music Department had the first performance in the Montagner auditorium in the form of a major recital, and the first major dramatic performance was the VCE Theatre Studies performance of Amadeus. There is no doubt that these will be the first of many performances to play to this very impressive venue.
For more information on Theatrical Installations, contact Peter Gray of Lightmoves on 9701 2500
Construction Team
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