Albany Theatre

Enlightened were honoured to be approached by the Albany Theatre in Deptford to help with the complete technical refurbishment and new installation of their multi purpose theatre space. Working in close collaboration with their Head of Production Ben Stephen and his team we were tasked with finding exciting and creative solutions for their dynamic central theatre space. 

This busy and diverse arts performance space hosts performances and installations across the arts spectrum from full theatre productions, music, dance and spoken word through to club nights and children’s shows. 

The theatre’s performance dynamic also needed to easily transform from, performances in the round to traditional end on and thrust configurations, whilst still maintaining maximum creative flexibility alongside equally versatile and beautiful house lighting.

This was an exciting challenge and a significant upgrade to the lighting that preceded the refurbishment. On the installations scale Ben wrote, ‘to give you an idea of scope our house lighting system went from 22 channels to 502’!

Jeremy Walker Head of Installation at Enlightened together with Ben and his team decided on an innovative and striking choice to feature light the theatres new balconies. Working with the technical teams at Anolis, Enlightened’s team installed over 100 Anolis ArcPix RGB LED nodes into the Balcony surrounds affording full control over the lighting environment and providing stunning lighting states that, “completely exceeded our expectations” says Ben, adding, “The overall effect is really captivating and the auditorium has become more of a work of art than ever”.

Jeremy Walker commented. “The ArcPix was not designed to be embedded in wooden and steel panels, but this meant that as a source it wasn’t over-powering but had the colour resolution that we were striving for in the theatre and it really works in this context. When on, the lighting looks fantastic in situ and when off the fixtures are totally concealed”.

The Enlightened team also supplied a full production lighting rig comprising a mix of moving light; (Robe 4x Dl4S and 4x DL4F and 12x Cauvet Rogue R1 Wash), combined with LED Fresnels (12x Arri LZ-C). 

Commenting on the loose equipment supplied Ben commented “the Arri’s are fab” and “gave us confidence to light a show without compromising something for the LED source, whilst still being able to really enjoy saturated colours for music or special effects”. He was just as delighted with the Robe DL4’s commenting, “they are a theatre lighting technician’s dream light – full additive colour mixing in the back end, super quiet, accurate, punchy in the profiles with a full shuttering modules and washes and an integral set of barndoors.  We’ve been able to recreate lighting states with about ten minutes desk programming time that previously have taken us an hour or two”.

Ben was also keen to praise the fact that the switch to LED also has the benefit that, “from a sustainability point of view the total draw for that whole rig at full whack is less than 6kW - about 30% of what we’d normally have been looking at for the same thing beforehand”.

Along with the lighting installations Enlightened also sourced and installed a complete technical upgrade for all Audio and Lighting Consoles, Controls and Desks and custom designed modular staging. 

Full installation of all technical upgrades from consultation to handover were completed by, our experienced, accredited and talented team. Of the finished installation Ben said, “Overall we couldn’t be happier – we’re saving time, saving money and the physical productions look amazing.”