The Sunrise Civic Centre, Florida was installed with a new lighting system in June 2017, made with over 125 Chauvet Professional fixtures.
JP Oliver, Technical Director for the City of Sunrise explained: “When all was said and done, we spent $250,000 on the new lighting system, including the fixtures, the console, the foggers and all the wiring/cabling
“We had over 150 line items of parts we needed to put this project together. Over six months were spent on the demo process, trying fixtures from different manufacturers and bringing some of them into our theatre for side-by-side comparisons. This is a city of under 100,000 people, so when you spend $250,000 on lighting for the theatre, you have to be right the first time. There are no second chances.”
The old system became inefficient and was unable to keep up with the theatre’s expanding creative scope. JP said: ” The old system was installed in 1998, the ellipsoidals had lost their reflective properties and, being incandescent, they limited us to a three-colour wash. The diverse range and quality of the shows we were putting on called for a better lighting system.”
JP and the theatre’s lighting programmer Daniel Couppe spearheaded the process of designing a new system. They knew that the system they wanted would have to be comprised of full-colour LED fixtures. Given the large number of fixtures they anticipated adding, they also knew that they would need a minimum of eight universe control options.
The only non-movers in the indoor theatre rig are 30 Ovation E-910FC RGBA-Lime colour-mixing ellipsoidals. These fixtures are divided into six groups of five units each and hung on two FOH electrics. The Ovation E-910FC fixture in the middle of each group has a 26° lens, and the two units on each side of it have 19° lenses.
JP added: “This arrangement gives us full coverage of the stage apron and the proscenium, so we now have six areas of full-colour coverage, which is something we did not have in the past.”
The theatre’s design team hung four Rogue R2 Spot fixtures at the furthest FOH electric in the centre of the theatre for stage and audience lighting. There are four other Rogue R2 Spot fixtures, along with 12 Rogue R1 Spot units, and 30 Rogue R2 Wash lights hung on three electrics over the stage to provide unlimited colour and intensity options to meet the needs of the theatre’s diverse repertoire. A collection of 12 Ovation B-2805FC cyc lights also make up the rig, with half of them being flown 26’ over the stage and half positioned on the deck.
The outdoor amphitheatre is devoted almost entirely to concerts. Designed around movement and brightness, its rig is made up of two Maverick MK2 Spot fixtures, two Rogue R2 Spot units, eight Rogue R1 Wash lights and five Rogue R1 FX-B movers. For colour washing, the amphitheater has 15 IP65-rated COLORado 3 Solo fixtures and six Ovation B-2805FC cyc lights.
JP concluded: “Everyone has been very happy with the indoor theatre and outdoor amphitheater lighting, we get a lot of compliments from people around town. Credit should go to the entire team for this accomplishment. There were a lot of people involved in this process; from our mayor to our deputy director on down, we received a lot of support. In the end, we got a lighting system that enhances productions and makes them more enjoyable for the entire community.”
