Situated in Hamilton, New Zealand, the BNZ Theatre is a versatile performing arts venue featuring a 1,300-seat auditorium, circle balconies, and flexible staging arrangements. It hosts a variety of events, including concerts, rock, pop, and rap performances, musicals, ballet, opera, and community ceremonies.
The venue was previously known as Waikato Regional Theatre, before a five-year naming-rights partnership with Bank of New Zealand (BNZ), in collaboration with Live Nation New Zealand.
Māori soul singer, TEEKS, was the first major artist to perform on the theatre’s public opening night on January 23, followed by New Zealand legends Sir Dave Dobbyn and Bic Runga and the first international artist, Sophie Ellis Bextor.
ACLX, Waikato’s leading production equipment supplier, was chosen to provide technical advice and solutions. Managing Director Aaron Chesham quickly recommended Robert Juliat followspots and MA Lighting control systems.
The Robert Juliat Tristan high-output 825W cool-white LED followspot with a 7°-14.5° zoom range was the perfect choice for this size venue, where throw size is not as far as in arenas. Tristan rivals traditional 1800W MSR followspots in a more compact footprint.
“The two Tristans will serve them better over a long period of time,” commented Aaron. “A nice sharp focus in a small size is pretty much what they’re running with. However, they can apply the frost on top of that sharp focus to achieve a very nice soft focus with no fiddling around.
“Tristan’s CTO is perfect for a theatre. I’ve used plenty of followspots whose CTO doesn’t quite feel right, but these really feel like a nice, warm tungsten.”
Aaron observes that the original followspot operators were volunteers, who quickly and easily ensured the efficient operation of the Tristans.
“The ergonomic dimmer, pan, and tilt features enable smooth one-handed operation for full control over intensity and beam size,” Aaron said. “That is great for our operators. Tristan’s electronic iris is an amazing feature as it offers smoother control, adjustable scaling, max limits, and direct console operation.”
With New Zealand awash with MA Lighting consoles, choosing the grandMA3 light console was a no-brainer for Aaron.
“It’s certainly become a bit of a regional thing, every big venue in Waikato has an MA for control,” he said. “We have a couple of MAs in our production hire department, and the arena has them – it’s all great backup if required.”
For the opening concerts, Aaron supplied the venue with his recently purchased six Prolights Astra Hybrid330IP, a hybrid LED moving head that packs a punch.
“We purchased them to replace our Martin MH7 fixtures, which have worked great for ten years however, we needed an IP-rated fixture for all the outdoor work that we do,” explained Aaron. Despite its compact size, the Astra Hybrid330IP delivers impressive power, a broad range of visual effects, and useful animation and zoom capabilities. It’s also very bright with accurate colours.”
Aaron is so pleased with his Prolights Astra Hybrid330IP fixtures that he intends to buy twice as many soon.
