The Art House is the centre for the arts on the NSW Central Coast. Since opening in 2016, it has become a venue of national significance and was awarded Performing Arts Centre of the Year in 2022, whilst also providing a state-of-the-art performance space for the local community.
The venue consists of a 500-seat theatre, a 178-seat studio, a foyer exhibition space, meeting facilities, and a Café/Bar, and is managed by an independent not-for-profit entity with an independent board of directors.
The venue has invested in six Ayrton Stradale fixtures and plans to add more soon. Having been highly satisfied with the performance of its Ayrton Mistrals, particularly the quality of their output, they chose Ayrton again when upgrading the moving-head profiles in their rig.
“The Ayrton Stradale Profile matches perfectly with our Ayrton Mistral,” stated Tom Skelton, Production & Operations Manager at The Art House. “They both offer highly accurate colour mixing and gobo consistency, so we can mix and match them with no problem. It’s good because, for example, every manufacturer seems to have its own version of red. If every fixture is already matched, it saves a lot of time.”
Of course, every theatre would like a fixture that offers framing shutters, and the Ayrton Stradale’s framing system provides precise positioning of each shutter blade across 100% of the beam with a rotation of +/- 90°.
“As a theatre, we want more than just eye candy looks and aerial effects,” commented Tom. “Sometimes we’re simply lighting set pieces or certain areas of the stage, so having the framing shutters gives us the flexibility to use the Stradales as a true moving head profile. We have tight turnarounds and high volume in our venue, so this was very important. If someone turns up with an unexpected set piece, banner or whatever, we don’t have to fly the lighting bar in and bring in an EWP to focus.”
Tom adds that he has spent some time exploring Stradale’s infinite continuous pan-and-tilt rotation. As more of their plotting shifts to an xy reference, he says the fixture’s ability to rotate continuously on both axes will become increasingly useful.
Stradale offers a wide variety of effects, including an animation wheel, rotating and linear prisms, frost filters and, of course, gobos, of which nine are rotating, and ten are fixed.
“The multi-coloured, petri dish gobo is cool because it looks completely different depending on which colour you put in front of it,” remarked Tom. “It gives you a heap of different looks and options. When you’re busking a show and trying to come up with a different look for each song, the more you can squeeze out of each gobo, the better off you’ll be.”
Tom is also impressed by Stradale’s ultra-fast CMY progressive gradient mixing system, which ensures seamless colour transitions, brighter output, and impeccable uniformity.
