Everything for Everyman Theatre with GDS

	Everyman Theatre with GDS. Photo: Philip Vile

It would be practically impossible to overstate the importance of the Everyman Theatre to the city of Liverpool. To list the names of those whose careers are synonymous with it, would be to compile a who's who of artistic giants, their ground-breaking work deeply embedded in the national psyche, their place at the top table of British cultural history assured. In the early 1960s a group of artists, poets, writers, and musicians who met at the then Hope Hall Cinema, decided that the building would make a good theatre and in 1964, the Everyman was born. Closed in 1975 for rebuilding, it reopened in 1977 and there followed 34 years that shaped the careers of Willy Russell, Alan Bleasdale, Julie Walters, Bernard Hill, and Pete Postlethwaite to name a just a handful. In 2011, the Everyman closed its doors again for a £28 million redevelopment, funded for the most part by Arts Council England and The European Development fund. Architects Haworth Tompkins was responsible for the design of the new Everyman. Shortly after its reopening in March 2014 the project won a highly-prized RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) award for North-West Region Building of the Year and was subsequently placed on a shortlist of six for the national award. By combining thermally massive construction with a series of natural ventilation systems and low-energy technical infrastructures, the building has achieved a BREEAM Excellent Rating (BREEAM being an environmental assessment method and rating system for buildings).

The 400-seat Everyman will act as a "creative hub" for the city. It boasts a dedicated youth and community space to house the theatre's extensive and growing work with schools and community groups as well as rehearsal space and production workshops. Housed in an award-winning, exciting, state-of-the-art building, the future of the Everyman looks well set to match its rich heritage.

Central to the redevelopment of the theatre was the appointment of theatre consultants Charcoalblue whose reputation complemented the vision of the architects and the wishes of the Everyman's own creative team. The "low energy technical infrastructures" were key to the overall environmental picture.

The brief of the entire project demanded the most stringently efficient use of energy in what was to become, to coin the architect's phrase, a "densely inhabited urban building." A back-catalog of installations at similar sites such as The Bristol Old Vic, The Savoy Theatre, and The Eventim Hammersmith Apollo to mention a few in the UK, served to emphasize the strength of the GDS brand and each of the creative teams involved specified its use. House lights, emergency lights, and BluesSystem back stage working lights were all to be supplied by GDS and when the Everyman team further specified the employment of a GDS SMConsole (Stage Manager's Console) and CueLight System, the first GDS full system theatre was created.

GDS ArcSystem was used for the house lights and emergency lighting throughout. Wirelessly controlled using GDS' ArcMesh protocol, these highly-efficient LEDs are fully dimmable from 100% - 0. Surface or recess mounted, single or multi-cellular, and with optics offering a range of beam angles, they are convection cooled and run silently. In the Everyman Theatre more than 170 ArcSystem fixtures were installed. GDS BluesSystem was used in all working areas. This system, mounted directly onto electrical conduit for reliable dimmable working lights. More than 100 Blue Beam and Blue Dome fixtures were put in place.

The Everyman specified the GDS Stage Manager's console. As a consequence of its product research, GDS produced a console that can be tailored to meet the specific needs of the stage manager in a given environment. The requirements of different performance spaces and the varying nature of productions they stage, means that a "one-size-fits-all" approach is rarely ideal -- the custom nature of the GDS Stage Manager's console enables the stage manager to choose from a range of options that exactly suit his or her particular needs. In the case of the Everyman Theatre, a change of plan means that the necessary changes could be made during its production to ensure it still offered an optimum facility.

Ian Stickland of Charcoal Blue Theatre Consultants commented: "When the initial houselighting scheme for the new Everyman was designed, we had resigned ourselves to using Tungsten fittings but as the Everyman theatre is naturally ventilated and designed to achieve 'BREEAM Excellent,' we were keen to explore a suitable LED alternative. With the development of the ArcSystem we were able to offer the client a low energy system that met their exacting standards for flexibility, dimming, and color temperature. We arranged for Matt Lloyd to demonstrate the installation at Bristol Old Vic to the architect and artistic director. They were suitably convinced and so the entire house and worklighting scheme was changed for the Arc fittings."

Both Matt Lloyd and Paul Johnson from GDS were involved in the system design.

"The key to the success of the Everyman auditorium is its ability to maintain the familiar warmth and charm of the old theatre in a sustainable, flexible way and the use of the GDS ArcSystem is an important factor in achieving this," concludes Stickland.

Head of lighting at the Everyman, Kay Haynes added: "We're proud to become the first GDS full system theatre and are delighted with the results of using the GDS ArcSystem, BluesSystem, Stage Manager's Console, and CueLight System. The new Everyman has sustainability at its heart so it was important to find a lighting solution that could deliver that, while not compromising on the quality and GDS more than fulfilled those requirements. The lighting is very efficient and reliable and the color temperature for LEDs is great. We have also found the BluesSystem to be excellent and it rarely needs to run at 'full' because of the brightness it delivers."

"The system gives us superb flexibility -- it is adaptable for the full range of stage configurations that the new auditorium can accommodate and has great wireless control. There is the capacity to access the whole GDS system from a laptop. I can be at any position in the auditorium and set minimum and maximum levels, flash certain channels to identify where they are and if they are working. All the house-lights and blues circuits can be controlled by the lighting console for use during shows, which allowed us to create a Mexican wave effect during the celebratory opening production."

GDS managing director Lloyd reflects on another GDS first: "As we celebrate our tenth anniversary I think we're entitled to take a measure of pride and satisfaction from the progress we've made and this project pretty much epitomizes everything we work towards at GDS. This is the first GDS full-system theatre and it's a landmark moment for the company. The Everyman has offered a ringing endorsement of our tireless approach to sustainability, flexibility, adaptability, and quality. The fact that it is a 'BREEAM Excellent' rated, famous theatre that has won a prestigious RIBA award naturally makes the headlines but for us at GDS, what speaks volumes is knowing that our products are now recognized in this way as 'go-to' systems across a huge range of venues worldwide. This is definitely a milestone for GDS that can only signal more exciting times ahead -- here's to the next ten years."