Gothenburg’s renaissance style Stora Teatern was originally built in 1859 and is one of the most popular historical buildings in the bustling Swedish port city. It now presents a lively mix of concerts, theatre and dance shows and is also a must-go weekend destination during the summer season as ‘Backstage’, a popular club/DJ performance experience in the region.
Due to its truly multi-purpose entertainment programme and many different configurations depending on the event, the show lighting rigs are constantly changing. Saving time and hassle, head of lighting Joel Karlberg has installed a LumenRadio wireless DMX system which enables data signals between the lights and the control desk to be re-routed quickly and easily.
Joel co-ordinates all the lighting technical elements and has found the wireless DMX system to be a flexible and practical solution for addressing and re-addressing around 30 moving lights in the rig which are used constantly – but in different locations and set ups – for all the shows and events.
When the Backstage club is running, the main dance floor and bar occupies what is normally the stage area and the space expands through the backstage and stage wings and outside right into the back of the venue with a large outdoor area enabling a capacity of 1200 party people to be accommodated.
The lighting rig for the club is completely different from that of a visiting dance or drama show using the stage, so lights are re-rigged in different places, but with the LumenRadio system in place, Joel doesn’t have to worry about running data cables to any of them or linking back to the lighting desk, he does it all wirelessly.
The main club session lights this season comprised 10 x Robe Pointes, 12 x Robe LEDWash 800s, four Clay Paky Mythos and four Vari*Lite VL1100s plus strobes – running via wireless DMX, plus an additional 30 x static LED bars and washes.
Using the inbuilt wireless cards on the Robe LEDWash 800s units, it’s possible to feed the whole rig with wireless data signals.
They have one permanent LumenRadio double transmitter (permanently installed in the roof), two receivers, one flexible unit (that can be configured as a transmitter or receiver) and one more transmitter, and the lights can be linked through these without having to mess around with running a whole chain of data cables… saving valuable time in set up.
A standard stage lighting rig – when the venue is receiving theatre productions – will utilise three LX pipes which are usually rigged with the 12 x LEDWash 800s, 10 x Martin Quantum Profiles and four Robe DL4S LED Profiles together with 8 x Vari*Lite VL1100s and an additional 50 x conventional fixtures.
Additional lighting fixtures or devices like smoke machines can be seamlessly linked to the lighting control console using the wireless system.
For concerts and performance style shows, the DL4Ss and LEDWash 800s can be taken down and moved to other active LX bars or the floor position – wherever they are best placed to light for the show being staged – and easily patched back into the system without running data lines.
To keep things fresh, as well as presenting music concerts in a standard set up with the band onstage, Stora Teatern also has bands playing in front of the stage – standing on a covered orchestra pit – with the audience onstage rather than sitting in the stalls! So the setup is changing constantly.
Before committing, he consulted several other LumenRadio users including the Riksteatern performing arts centre that also has a wireless DMX solution. They said it was solid and very stable, so Joel went ahead and specified the brand for Stora Teatern.
“We honestly save so much extra work,” says Joel, concluding that in addition to that, the service and support from LumenRadio is “excellent”.
