UK - The 600-capacity Under The Bridge, situated at Chelsea FC's Stamford Bridge ground, has been built on the site of the former Purple Nightclub. Close attention to detail and an extremely high specification were the goals of the creative team, headed by concept designer Jim Cafarelli (of House of Blues fame), Ian Woodall (of XL Video) and Andrew Frengley (Matrix Nine).

Both Woodall and Frengley have worked closely together in the past and it was the latter's extensive experience of touring EAW systems for many years (while a director of premier rental company, Canegreen) that drove

Denmark - Kastrup, Copenhagen-based Litecom A/S has recently invested in James Thomas 52-inch SuperTruss - custom-sprayed in black - from Danish distributor, Light Partner. The truss forms the base inventory initiating the company's newly-launched rigging department.

Litecom took delivery of Supertruss amounting to 265m in length - more than two and a half football pitches - and it has been in constant use since. The truss has been on many major televised shows in Denmark including X Factor, and the Zulu Awards.

Litecom MD, Kristian Dreier, comments, "We wanted to

China - Clay Paky has supplied Chinese broadcaster Anhui TV with Alpha Profile 1500s for its traditional Spring Festival show.

Chinese New Year, the most significant of all the traditional Chinese holidays, is a time when families gather to celebrate the passing of winter with feasting and dining. In recent times, a new family tradition has sprung up in the form an all-night New Year's TV show featuring drama, dance, music and comedy.

Once the preserve of state broadcaster CCTV, the televised New Year's Gala is said to be the most watched arts performance event anywhere in the world

UK - On 18 June The First Night Riders (FNRs) will once more rev up for an eight-day tour around the UK to raise money for The Theatrical Guild (TTG). You can join them for as long or as short a time as you like - a day, a weekend or, if you are feeling brave, the whole week!

On Saturday 18 June riders will depart from The National Theatre London and travel to the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds. They will travel to Norwich where they will have a backstage tour of the Theatre Royal. After an overnight stop, riders will journey to Castle Acre where they will have coffee with Jane Slatter

UK - Cornwall's largest professional theatre, Hall for Cornwall, has dramatically improved its energy efficiency following an investment in the new Philips Selecon range of SPX luminaires. The Truro venue welcomes more than 180,000 theatre goers per year and is the first arts organisation in the UK to complete a year of carbon emissions cuts, as part of its commitment to the 10:10 climate campaign.

The venue says that it has reduced electricity consumption in the auditorium by as much as 60 per cent since it replaced it's Cantata profile units with the Philips Selecon SPX range of lum

UK - Edinburgh's Pleasance Theatre, owned and run by the Edinburgh University Students' Association (EUSA) has installed a Yamaha LS9 digital console.

The 300-capacity Pleasance Theatre stages drama, live music, dance and comedy throughout the year, as well as hosting lectures, conferences and film screenings. Both professional and amateur companies use it and, with the venue also rented out for performances during the Fringe, it's rare to step inside and not find something going on.

"The theatre had previously had been an empty space with some tabs, a few hemp bars and a 125a

UK - Audio Light Systems has recently completed the audio-visual and lighting installation for a complete renovation of the V&A Museum's Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre.

The listed and elegant environment posed several problems including designing a subtle yet working infrastructure and providing a versatile system for use with lectures and concerts alike.

A Doughty custom curved lighting bar was installed to the rear stage area, with IWB booms installed to the left and right of the auditorium. Strand dimmers and Selecon lanterns were the chosen solution to provide productio

UK - Unusual Rigging has completed the project management of a major installation - a temporary 600-seat pavilion housing the month-long run of performances by Garsington Opera.

Garsington Opera has moved to the estate of Wormsley in the Chiltern Hills, home of the Getty family, after 22 years at Garsington Manor. Wormsley is located on the Oxfordshire - Buckinghamshire border in a parkland setting of approximately 2,500 acres.

Garsington Opera instructed architect Robin Snell and, following a competitive tendering process, appointed Unusual Rigging, as main contractor, to manage th

USA - During the weekend of 15-17 April 2011 Atlanta staged two large festivals at the same time and this year it was RCF TT+ systems that supplied the sound to a big audience at the SweetWater 420 Fest and the Atlanta Dogwood Festival.

The Atlanta Dogwood Festival is an arts and crafts festival held each spring at Piedmont Park in Atlanta. Originally held for nine days across two weekends, it is now held only one weekend during early April, when the native dogwoods are in bloom.

The Dogwood Festival 2011 was celebrating its 75th years anniversary in the beautiful surroundings of Pi

Turkey - An Istanbul branch of the Nomads club has opened in Istanbul, installed with an L-Acoustics coaxial sound system.

Nomads Istanbul follows the concept of the original Amsterdam venue, serving up a combination of European and Eastern culture in both its style and cuisine, with interior decorations and tableware sourced from Morocco and Egypt.

Attention to detail didn't end with the interior decor. The Su Entertainment Group also deemed technical design to be a crucial factor in the new club's success. The group thereby handed responsibility for sound and light system design a

China - Babyface Beijing has undergone a major refurbishment including the replacement of the sound system, which is now APG throughout.

New owner Mr Dai was very clear about what he wanted to achieve: "I want this club to stand out from the crowd," he said. "And for that, I have to have the best sound system and the best lighting system available." He turned to local audio experts and APG distributors BVCAM to help him with his choice of equipment.

BVCAM organised a demo for Mr Dai at their dedicated APG demo room in Shenzhen that turned out to be extremely conv

UK - Robe moving lights and Anolis LED fixtures were specified by lighting designer Simon Marcus from Enlightened to illuminate Bath Abbey, Pulteney Bridge and other key architectural features around the UK World Heritage spa town's city centre for the opening night of the 2011 Bath International Music Festival - Party In The City.

It is the second year that locally based Marcus has designed a lighting scheme for Bath Abbey, which was founded in 1499. His client was Bath Tourism & Leisure.

He needed a selection of reliable, flexible, bright lightsources which could be rigged

USA - A short but breathtaking drive from trendy Aspen, St. Benedict's Monastery reflects the natural serenity of its majestic surroundings. Nestled in a valley on several thousand acres in western Colorado's Elk Mountains, it offers spectacular views of nearby Mt. Sopris' twin summits. It is an idyllic environment for the Benedictine monks who mix their daily meditation and prayer with the running of a working ranch and bakery. The monks also operate the architecturally renowned Retreat House and Hermitages, hosting personal and group retreats, conducting daily liturgical services, and

Turkey - The recently opened Nomads nightclub in Istanbul features Coemar's moving heads. The iSpot 575 MB models have been installed in the large room and are controlled via the Director 768 mixer.

Nomads Istanbul follows the concept of the original Amsterdam venue, serving up a combination of European and Eastern culture in both its style and cuisine, with interior decorations and tableware sourced from Morocco and Egypt. With views of the Bosporus, a bar hung with hundreds of colourful, handmade Arabic lambs and a hidden garden, Nomads is set to make a mark on Istanbul's vibrant ni

UK - PLASA Events Ltd, organisers of PLASA 2011 (11-14 September, Earls Court, London) have announced the launch of this year's PLASA Awards for Innovation, which this year will include the newly named Sustainability Award - and of the 2011 Gottelier Award nomination process.

The PLASA Awards for Innovation always draw a great deal of interest from visitors to the PLASA Show, who can view all of the nominees in the specially designed 'Innovation Gallery', which will this year again be situated near the Earls Court 2 entrance to the Show. Independently judged by a panel of industry exp

Germany - Hamburg's oldest parish church, Hauptkirche St. Petri, founded in the 11th century, has been equipped with a state of the art sound system designed and installed by Cobra sound light. The Hamburg based live event and system design company has fitted church of the Hanseatic city with Renkus-Heinz IC Live digitally beam steerable loudspeakers.

Located in the heart of downtown on Hamburg's major shopping hub, Mönckebergstrasse, the 1,033-seat Hauptkirche St. Petri is considered the 'city church' and opens its doors daily to offer on oasis of calm and a place to meet.

Cobra s

UK / USA - Following on from the critical success of the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST) in Stratford-upon-Avon, the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) has further developed Charcoalblue's and Bennetts Associates' auditorium designs to deliver a 975-seat 'flat pack' travelling performance space.

The new, three-tiered structure has been built inside New York's historic Park Avenue Armory. Here, from 6 July - 14 August, Lincoln Center Festival and Park Avenue Armory, in association with The Ohio State University, are presenting the Royal Shakespeare Company for a repertoire of five of

UK - Already boasting an illustrious following among lounge nightclubs in London's clubland, including Mortons, Raffles, Stringfellows, Vendome, Bungalow 8 and Le Pigalle, Nexo has been given a big boost by new super-club Pulse, which has chosen a Geo S12 system for its primary space.

Pulse, also known as Bankside Vaults, is built into four spectacular interlinked brick arches, right beside Blackfriars Bridge in central London.

Divided naturally into four main interlinked areas, the space can be adapted for any occasion. Its primary space is equipped with a performance stage, recent

UK - CHAUVET, a leading manufacturer of professional lighting recently installed nearly 150 Chauvet fixtures in Troxy, a multifunctional venue for live concerts, corporate events, weddings, indoor sports and more. Lighting designer Dan Sanders capitalized on the dramatic uplighting opportunities of the art-deco style venue with a bevy of LED wash lights specified by JPS Sound & Light based in St. Ives.

Installed throughout the venue are 16 COLORado Tri Tour, 60 COLORband Tri and 10 COLORado Batten 72 Tour, as well as 36 LED PAR 38 wash lights. Sanders specifically sought LED-fitted fi

UK - News of another interactive new feature area at PLASA 2011 has been announced. The Theatres Trust will return to PLASA 2011 with an expanded version of its innovative Ecovenue feature, the area that gives visitors the chance to see how 48 pioneering London theatres are putting sustainability into practice.

Located in Earls Court 2, the feature takes the form of a theatre-in-miniature, complete with 'auditorium', 'stage', 'backstage', 'foyer' and 'box office'. In each area The Theatres Trust will demonstrate proven sustainability techniques, as well as featuring technologies from

UK - Chichester Festival Theatre is one of the UK's flagship theatres, with a reputation for producing a wide range of theatrical productions, from musicals and comedies, to classic drama and innovative new writing. Since opening in 1962, the theatre has established an international reputation as one of the UK's leading regional venues. The Festival Theatre was founded by Leslie Evershed-Martin CBE and its first artistic director was Laurence Olivier.

With 1206 seats, the Festival Theatre was the first modern theatre in this country to have an open 'thrust' stage with the audience sea

UK - Earlier this year The Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST), along with 97 other architectural projects, won a much-coveted 2011 Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Award. Six of the 97 projects went on to be shortlisted for the prestigious Stirling Prize; the RST was one of them. The team at Charcoalblue Theatre Consultants, the company responsible for the design and planning of the theatre auditorium and the technical facilities, both in the auditorium and backstage, is delighted.

Managing director Andy Hayles comments, "This is the fifteenth project that the Charcoalbl

UK - The Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury is set to become one of the country's landmark theatres. Following a £25.6m development project, the venue will open on 4 October 2011. Award-winning theatre consultants Charcoalblue was appointed by owners of the theatre, Canterbury City Council, and were responsible for the design, planning and technical specification of the auditorium and backstage areas for both the main auditorium and the multi-configurable Marlowe Studio.

Working alongside architect Keith Williams of Keith Williams Architects was project manager for Charcoalblue, Paul C

UK - At this year's PLASA show, London-based theatre consultancy Charcoalblue will be joining the technical team of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST) and Jonathan Porter-Goff of Stage Electrics to reveal how their designs, and the collaborative work they did with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), transformed one of the world's most famous theatre auditoriums into a world-class performance space.

Charcoalblue will discuss the design concepts that resulted in this critically acclaimed new performance space for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-Upon-Avon.

Andy Hayles, manag

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