DiGiCo flexibility helps Denver theatre group
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The production company primarily uses the four theatres of the Helen Bonfils Theatre Complex housed at the massive 12-acre Denver Performing Arts Complex, itself home to 10 theatres and 10,000 seats. So, the compact and flexible DiGiCo SD10T, which was acquired through Colorado Springs’ Second Opinion Audio was an appropriate choice for the peripatetic ensemble, whose performances will move between the complex’s four theatre spaces and, sometimes, beyond.
“We’ve had the console in all of the theatres we use regularly so far and it’s been very successful,” says director of sound Craig Breitenbach, sound designer for many of the company’s shows. That began last August, with a musical production at the 778-seat Stage Theatre, the largest of the four theatres in the Helen Bonfils Theatre Complex (the others are The Space Theatre, The Ricketson Theatre and The Glenn R. Jones Theatre), but was followed in October with The Wild Party, which was performed offsite in a former aircraft hangar. It’s now on its third production, and Breitenbach says the SD10T is a great performer.
“We really like its flexibility and I/O capacity,” he says. “Some of our projects, especially musical theatre, can get fairly complex.”
Breitenbach specifically called out the software’s matrix nodal delays: with up to 1.3 seconds of delay available per node and individually recallable per cue, this feature allows accurate control over audio placement and time alignment in distributed theatrical loudspeaker systems. In fact, during the console’s first production, The Wild Party, performed in a former aircraft hangar, “We relied heavily on the nodal delay feature for that,” he says. “But, in addition to all that, what we find great is how transportable the console is. It can go anywhere and get the job done.”
(Jim Evans)
