Jands Gets The Memo

Healesville, Australia's newly refurbished Memorial Hall is now known as "The Memo", a new cultural focus for the Healesville and Yarra Valley Region. It has a contemporary art space, a 300 seat performing arts facility, and 3-D digital cinema. The program includes professional touring theatre, live music performances, and art house cinema.

Significant upgrades have been made to the stage and backstage facilities whilst the foyer and auditorium have been upgraded to improve the public experience, all under the watchful eye of theatre consultants Marshall Day Entertech.

The entire hall floor and stage presents as a continuous flat surface, but thanks to the Spiralift system, the stage area forward of the proscenium can be lowered below the auditorium floor and moveable seating modules can be wheeled on to the motorized platform from a storage area under the stage.

"In conjunction with the hall retractable seating system, you then have continuous raked seating that gives the impression that the stage is elevated," comments John Alekna, associate at Marshall Day Entertech. "The Gala Spiralift gives the venue flexibility for functions and performances."

The design came about after an initial discussion Peter Grisard, Jands' national manager of projects, had with the Marshall Day team and the architects.

"The Spiralift enables goods to be loaded from street level and then up to the auditorium, which is a fairly standard arrangement for a motorized stage platform," adds Peter Grisard. "It solves OSHA problems with moving heavy items such as pianos."

A lot of coordination was required at the front of the stage due the close proximity of a curtain track, a cinema screen, a lighting bar, and the cinema speakers that are suspended from Jands-supplied tri truss. Jands coordinated and installed seven of their H500P-VX winches, which are ready to be used out of the box featuring a minimum 500kg lifting capacity, provision for .25" by .2" wire ropes, and 45' of drift.

"The Jands H500 winches don't take up much room, are reliable, and the control system they provide is easy to use," Alekna says.

The aforementioned controller was the Jands SAX-P1 single axis controller that can also be used with installed Jands equipment such as motorized curtain systems, custom hoists, and other motorized applications such as revolves.

Another Jands H500P-VX hoist was added for the cinema speakers that can be raised out of the proscenium when the screen isn't being used.

Jands supplied the front of house and stage lighting bars including eighteen Jands JLX PRO lighting bars. Lighting infrastructure included 150 stage lighting outlets and eight Jands HPC Series dimmers located in a central location under the stage with the patch panel.

A Pathport system allows more flexibility and gives the venue the opportunity to exploit the potential of Ethernet and extend the useful life of their existing and future DMX equipment.

"Pathport is a definite plus in these types of venue," Grisard says. "When we've installed Pathport into venues such as this, they have always been very grateful, as it's much more flexible than installing a traditional DMX-based infrastructure."

After discussions with the venue's Technical Manager, the decision was made to install an ETC Element console. Lighting fixtures were also provided by Jands.

"It's an ambitious little venue that has brushed up really well," Grisard says.