As the oldest Council building in the Shire, officially opened in 1922, this has been a long-term home for performances by Sutherland’s local theatre and music companies. With its recent refurbishment complete, the Sutherland Arts Theatre is now open. The facility also houses early 1900’s memorabilia for the Shire, adding to the building’s important heritage value for the District. Council states: ‘the former Memorial School of Arts has a capacity of 160, and is the perfect home for comedy, music, film screenings and theatre productions requiring an intimate space’.
The P.A. People was selected to work with Sullivans Builders for the project, with Jeff Bellingham from Sutherland Entertainment Centre supplying the specification. Renovations over the years have retained features of the period, and with this latest upgrade, various works required care in relation to preservation aspects. The upgrade now provides a level of AV spec to accommodate a greater range of end-users, with a stage, small orchestra pit, a wheelchair access lift – among other inclusions.
For the main performance space, lighting fixtures LED Multipars, DMX distribution and a front-of-house lighting bar is located further into the room to allow improved throw and disbursement onto the stage area. There are new DMX feeds to all lights and LED fixtures, plus DMX stage inputs back to the LSC MDR DMX distribution. The sound upgrade features new Bose F1 speakers suspended from the ceiling, with subs placed under the stage. There are new stage inputs to Prompt and Off Prompt which can be patched into the Yamaha Digital stage box or via analogue tie line to a mixing position at the rear of the Hall, a Yamaha TF3 mixing desk handles the audio task for larger performances.
Two new radio mics have been installed in the side of stage rack, wired directly to the simple Yamaha MTX mixer to provide an easy-to-use system for basic Audio requirements, with the addition of an Auxiliary input. The radio mics are also patchable into the main TF3 mixer.
There is a new bar area and an outdoor space, and together with the foyer area the spaces have overflow speakers installed; controls for these areas and a paging facility are available in the foyer control panel. This upgraded facility is now open for business!
