The Playhouse contains a very sophisticated lighting and sound control booth. It is located in the rear of the theatre and affords the operators a clear view of the stage action.
The lighting control is a 108 dimmer per circuit ETC Insight board. All of the lighting cues are programmed and saved on the board's internal computer. The stage manager has a satellite monitor showing what the light board is doing.
The sound control equipment is essentially all digital. We record shows on the 2 Sony minidisc machines and also use a Sony 5 disc CD player. Occasionally we use the Panasonic dual cassette deck. The amplifiers are OSC stereo amps and the system has a Symetrix stereo parametric equalizer. The shows are mixed with a Sprint FX16, a 16 channel mixer with special effects. A Macintosh computer system is fully integrated into the system and is connected to a Roland XP-30 64 voice synthesizer as well. Digital music from the synth, digital sound effects from the internet and other sources and from CD's can be edited on the computer and burned onto CD's. Sound cues can be run from the computer or the rack equipment and mixed using the console.
The booth operators are connected to the stage manager via a two channel Clear-Com headset system. The stage manager's station includes a complete video monitor system, with a color camera on the stage, camera in the stage left wings, camera in the lobby and an infared camera on the stage (so the stage manager can see actors getting into position in the dark!)
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