DRAMA ON THE STAGE AND BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Englert Theater's legacy continues with new sound system installation.

By Jim Stokes

A CULTURAL LANDMARK

The Englert Theatre has a legacy of community entertainment for city residents as well as students at the University of Iowa, which is a short distance away. Furthermore, the venue has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has been included as an official project of "Save America's Treasures", a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

As an aside and related, this writer recalls the historic renovation of the Pantages Theater in Minneapolis. Thus it's heartening to see preservation of the artistic and entertainment past when movie multiplexes have all but supplanted the neighborhood theater. Moreover, the renovated turn-of-the-century theatrical venues host a wide range of acts from a singer in the center stage spotlight to a full-blown production. As a colorally, the Englert, like the Pantages and other similar theatres, represents a useful multi-use and historic property that is fading away from towns and cities throughout the country.

The original Englert was built in 1912 to replace a late 19th century opera house. The thriving live-performance circuit of the times, which graced the theatre's stage, included such famous actors as Harry Lauder, Ethel Barrymore, Paul Robeson, Fanny Brice and Sara Bernhardt. Local high schools held their official functions there, as well.

Sadly, in 1926, a raging fire destroyed the building. However, the fortress-like brick exterior remained standing and the interior was rebuilt. Motion-picture projectors were installed, although live performances continued until the Great Depression in the 1930s. And the Englert remained a movie house until 1999. Today, The Englert Civic Theatre Inc. is a nonprofit community organization that aims to create a multi-use live-performance house in Iowa City. Stage use extends from solo performances to plays, musicals and dance. An agreement between the University of Iowa and the Englert brings performances by UI's Performing Arts Division. Some of those events included Menotti's Amhal and the Night Visitors, by UI's Opera Theater, last December, and chamber music concerts. At press time, a glance at the Englert's spring roster shows songwriter/performer Greg Brown, the hillbilly-humored New Horizons Band and three children's plays: Tom Sawyer, Beauty and the Beast, and The Elves and the Shoemaker.

The venue's 30'x24' proscenium compares favorably to some Broadway stages. The stage has full, three-story fly loft above and dressing room space unserneath. There's a three-inch steel-reinforced concrete floor under the wooden stage floor, which is supported by cast-iron trusses every eight inches. Clearly, the building was built to last for generations.

Sound sytem design was by consultant Gary Sanborn with additional help from his partner Rick Loula at PAT Design, Iowa City. Sanborn is the design spokesperson here. Install was by Lifeline Amplification Systems, Platteville, WI. President Scott Wright and head installer Bernie Millage discuss their work. Because of the tight timeline for the installation, Douglass Communications was contracted to help pull all cable and do the DSP programming.

SECOND ACT COMPLICATIONS

Comparing this install to a play, the heart of the drama would be in the second act. "What we have here is a failure to communicate," the famous Strother Martin line from the movie Cool Hand Luke, and the age of the building were underlying factors for the project's install challenges.

Although the goal was to have all systems up and running for A Christmas Carol starting on December 2nd last year, "they were still hanging the fire wall and had not yet received an occupying permit," according to Scott Wright. "We deal with a lot of historic structures in renovation projects. And you're going to run into issues. In fact, there were people working through the night of December 1st just getting some things finished."

Wright noted that his install company was given a full month, which was "a reasonable timeline for our portion, as long as all the electrical in the facility was ready for us. The place was a renovation of things other than the sound system...which also included electrical, painting, plastering, seats, curtains, lighting, structural and some modifications to the building. And they were nowhere close to being ready for us. We couldn't do things until other people finished doing their things."

When it was obvious that a completely installed sound system wasn't going to happen by curtain time on December 2nd, the immediate solution was to rent portable gear so the show could go on. "There was no real, true'go-to' individual on the job," declared Wright. "So Bernie (Millage) and his crew put togheter a list and presented it to the electrical contractor." Rather than worry about installing paging and the dressing rooms sound system, house speakers were put up, a mixing console was put in place and portable snakes were put into temporary operation.

"Our biggest hassle was the electrical," explained Millage. "The building was so old that access to conduit was hard to get to". Runs that would be 30 feet if the path were straight ended up being 150 to 200 feet in some instances. "The conduit run had to be moved, constantly."

SPEAKERS

The left/center/right flown house system in comprised of Renkus-Heinz speakers driven by QSC power amplifiers. "Renkus-Heinz makes a well-engineered array", declared consultant Gary Sanborn on cluster speaker choice. "And I like them sonically, as well." House sound system DSP is provided by a Biamp AudiaFLEX.

The center cluster, which carries speach and paging, consistes of an S9/4-2(T) Reference Point Array and two downfills mounted on the sides of the RPA. Then the house left and right clusters hndle stereo music playback for imaging," explained Sanborn. Each of those clusters has a CT5212/94 with an STX2M/94 downfill. The subwoofer is a Renkus-Heinz BPS-15.

To ensure even house coverage, other Renkus-Heinz speakers include a pair of STX2M/64 side fills, left/center/right TRX81/12 for upper balcony and eight Fraizer C399s for the underbalcony. "The Fraizers sound awesome," said head installer Bernie Millage.

Various Crest and Crown amplifiers drive other speaker systems. Additional speaker support includes a half-dozen EAW LA212s stage-monitor wedges. The makeup and dressing rooms, as well as the loby, are served, variously, by Atlas, Peavey and QSC speakers.

RIGGING HAZARDS

While we're on the topic of speakers, house speaker rigging was a challenge. Fortunately, there was a large catwalk for sound above the proscenium arch. "The catwalk could have held a Mack truck," Millage said. "Otherwise, there is nothing but a suspended plaster grid ceiling. Although we were able to rig of the catwalk, our left and right speaker pairs were about two feet ahead of the catwalk. We were able to get a steel guy up there, who helped make a couple of large braces that would hold the speakers' weight. Our outside left and right pair were about 426 pounds each!" Speaker angles were rotated by means of an Allen Products FlyRing of two fly points, instead of three. "I did all my down angle and side-to-sound angle right of this bracket."

The Renkus-Heinz subwoofer is flown center stage and delayed from the main system. Millage noted that the sub was winched through a front stage hole provided for stage lighting, which just happened to be the same size as the sub. "we wound up building a small bracket to raise the sub as straight as we possibly could," he related. Although the winch was anchored in the attic, "the ceiling wasn't completely finished. If you bumped any ceiling plaster, a big chunk could come off the old building. So it was a slow process that took us a good portion of the day."

The install crew had to tread carefully, loading the compact 10' x 10' sound room's amplifier and DSP rack, its equipment and cabling, which is located on a catwalk some 30 feet in the air and accessible by ladder. "It's a catwalk built on the way up to the lighting catwalk," explained Wright. "We had to take the Middle Atlantic rack apart on the ground, then haul up the rack and equipment, and put it all together on the catwalk."

CONSOLES, OUTBOARD PROCESSING

Consultant Gary Sanborn specified Crest house and monitor consoles. "I like the idea that they mmatch. The X-Eight FOH console does "left/center/right" panning properly. It's important in theatrical to get your panning right. If you want to use that feature of the console, Crest offers a lot for the money." Regarding the HP-Eight, he said, "It was very fortunate I could put a monitor console in there. The budget has been all over the place the last couple of years. I saw the HP-Eight at NSCA last year and it was within the budget." There's a Radial 40-channel mic splitter in the monitor chain, as well. House console processing includes an Ashly Protea DSP, dbx compressor/limiters and a Lexicon reverb. Playback sources include Marantz CD and Tascam mini-disc players. The monitor console has dbx processing.

The FOH console resides in the balcony at audience left. "It's a nice monitoring position. It's not way to the back and it doesn't block people behind us." However, he noted that the problem with the balcony location is stage access. "You need to go down to the stage during rehearsal to adjust something or see if they need another mic." Therefore, Sanborn's PAT Design partner Rick Loula designed a ramp that connects the console area to the sound room. From there, the stage can be accessed by a ladder. The monitor console found a niche on the counterweight landing come eight feet above the stage. "There's just enough room for the monitor console, as well," said Sanborn. "It's of the stage and there's still a good view of the performers."

PATCHING, PAGING, INTERCOM

ProCo XLR microphone patch panels and dry lines, along with Countryman direct boxes, are used throughout the facility, providing great flexibility. For instance, patches can be made at the lighting booth, FOH console, stage console and back of stage locations for sending signals back and forth. "The nice thing aboul XLRs is that touring companies can come in and set up their own gear."

Paging can be done back and forth from the stage to the box office, the first and second floor lobbies, dressing rooms and the lighting booth. Emergency paging allows paging everywhere in the building. And the audience can be paged over the mono central cluster via the AudiaFLEX. Non-audience 70-volt areas are paged via Biamp Nexia. An extensive Clear-Com intercom system envelops the building, as well.

The Englert's microphone inventory includes such items as Crown PCC-160s, ElectroVoice RE20s, Sennheiser MD421s, as well as Shure hardwired and wireless. Additional microphones are either rented by the theater or supplied by touring companies.

There's a "show sound" Audio-Technica AT815B balcony railmounted mic used for several applications. "It's an ambient microphone used when the sound system isn't being used," explained Millage. "It runs through a little Shure FP16A mixer taht's housed in the rack where it's patchable into the Williams hearing-assistance system. The show sound mic/mixer can also be patched onto a dry line for recording or broadcasting. So it's basically used for performances that don't use the sound system."

Wright noted that the renovated Englert Theatre "has been very successful. Almost every show has been sold out." And as Gary Sanborn observed, "In the long run, an audience can forgive a few lighting instruments or loudspeakers showing. But they can't forgive a bad show."