Stages of change with AV tech
- Live team
- 14 minutes ago
- 10 min read
As the curtain rises on a new era of stagecraft, AV is taking a leading role
Words Verity Butler
Once upon a time, the magic of theatre was confined to the proscenium. Painted flats, creaking pulleys and a flicker of stage light on a faded set of velvet curtains were the welcome regulars of past theatre productions. Though they still conjure something nostalgic, it’s impossible to deny that today’s stages look, sound and behave very differently.
As an art form, theatre is an ever-shifting ecosystem. Before, it was most common in playhouses and, if we were to go even further back, amphitheatres. Now, it lends itself to everything from grand opera halls and expansive dance stages to intimate fringe sets, vivacious cruise liners and immersive venues – to name just a few!
At the heart of this change is audio-visual technology. No longer a support act, stage tech is seen as a central creative member of any given production team, crucial to helping shape how stories are told.
Bringing cinema to stage
The boundary between stagecraft and screencraft is blurring, with the increased use of LED-based visual design proving to be more than a simple technical flourish. Recent analysis from Stats Market Research showed that venues equipped with LED screens saw 25-40% higher utilisation rates, hosting a broader mix of live and hybrid events than those with conventional set-ups.
In the case of Stranger Things: The First Shadow, the theatre adaptation of Netflix’s global phenomenon, the challenge was monumental. How do you translate a story so rooted in cinematic special effects into a live stage environment?
The solution came in the form of a custom InfiLED LED wall, based on the company’s lightweight AR Series for rental staging applications. Delivered in partnership with Blue-i Theatre Technology and creative studio 59 Productions, the LED installation integrates seamlessly with physical sets, amplifying the show’s eerie, myth-laden atmosphere.
“The use of LED screens in theatre is no longer just about adding digital effects,” explains Ed Cooper, director of Blue-i Theatre Technology. “It’s also about enhancing the storytelling and amplifying the audience’s emotional connection to the performance.”
That philosophy emphasises The First Shadow’s design approach. Rather than appearing as a screen, the LED wall acts as an extension of the set – a textured, responsive part of the world of Hawkins, Indiana, circa 1959. The display’s high contrast and smooth tonal control allow for sudden lighting shifts and shadowy transitions that make the supernatural elements feel alive and immediate.
Blue-i Theatre Technology chose InfiLED’s AR Series along with Brompton Technology processing as the backbone of the system. Offering high dynamic range, deep blacks and painterly colour rendering, the AR Series (now upgraded to the ARmk2) could deliver the team’s demanding brief, with 10-bit colour depth that gave smooth transitions.
“The 10-bit colour depth is essential,” says Cooper. “It makes transitions much smoother and is critical for seamless visual effects in a live theatre setting.”
In addition to visual fidelity, the AR Series offers practical advantages. It’s lightweight, quiet and easy to maintain, which is crucial in theatre environments where space can be tight and quick turnarounds are the norm. Cooper notes that these features let the LED blend effortlessly into the stage while providing flexibility for complex cues and adjustments mid-performance.
“We’ve always been an InfiLED house, and for good reason,” Cooper adds. “InfiLED stands out in the theatre world, especially when paired with Brompton processing technology. Together, they meet the unique demands of live shows.”
Following its success at London’s Phoenix Theatre, the same visual strategy was taken across the Atlantic to Broadway’s Marquis Theatre, maintaining aesthetic continuity while adapting to a new venue. Audiences and critics alike have praised the production’s haunting visuals, which serves as proof that LED systems can evoke both cinematic grandeur and theatrical intimacy.
Beyond the backdrop
Theatres are called home by many art forms, and one particularly familiar resident is dance. Be it a musical number, ballet or backing for a musical act, the subjective nature of dance demands that theatres are readily equipped to help accentuate a variety of performance models.
An example of this is one of Australia’s leading performance arts companies, Bangarra Dance Theatre. It is a contemporary-dance-focused Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dance company. Founded by African-American dancer and choreographer Carole Y Johnson, Gumbaynggirr man Rob Bryant and South African-born Cheryl Stone, Bangarra means ‘to make fire’ in the Wiradjuri language.
When developing the company, Johnson had a three-part plan for Aboriginal dance in Australia. The first part was to establish a school that would train dancers as members of a student and graduate performing company, which would teach and give them academic qualifications as well. It would also seek to provide a path for dancers to other creative areas such as choreography, tour management and all front- and back-of-house skills. The third key aim was to maintain authentic cultural continuity, friendships and close ties to traditional communities.
So, while Stranger Things harnesses LED technology to conjure up the supernatural, Bangarra Dance Theatre uses it to explore cultural connection through contemporary movement.
Bangarra’s recent production, Illume, demonstrated how technology is no longer just a silent partner, but instead more of a creative collaborator. Like Stranger Things, the production team jumped on the use-of-LED-in-theatre bandwagon, by integrating a wall made of Roe Visual’s Carbon CB5 LED panels into their stage design.
Novatech Creative Event Technology supplied the complete LED set-up, marking Bangarra’s first-ever theatre-based production to choose an LED wall over traditional backdrops. Leveraging the enhanced creative potential offered by the Roe Visual wall, the company could achieve new, exciting and immersive visual effects, with textures and movements of light that weaved seamlessly around the dancers themselves.
Illume was not only innovative in its use of technology. It also represents Bangarra’s first collaboration with First Nations visual artist Darrell Sibosado. The creative partnership brought together movement and digital storytelling in a way that honoured their ancestral heritage, while incorporating new aspects of performance design.
“Partnering with Bangarra underscores our commitment to supporting the arts, particularly where innovation is concerned,” comments Leko Novakovic, the managing director of Novatech. “This is Bangarra’s first production using the possibilities of LED technology and the results have been outstanding.”
Similarly, Bangarra’s production manager Cat Studley praised the technology’s results, noting how the LED set-up elevated the team’s artistic ambitions. “The LED screen could cover everything we needed artistically, so we could bring even more ideas to life. It was the best way to go,” she enthuses.
Theatre sets sail
Theatre is no longer confined to land. As audiences increasingly seek immersive entertainment experiences in unexpected places, the technologies that power live performance (once found only in traditional venues) are finding new homes in ever more adventurous environments. And one of the most striking examples of this shift can be found – not in the West End or on Broadway – but far out at sea.
Aboard the floating entertainment worlds of Carnival Cruise Line, live shows, concerts and multimedia spectaculars rival those of land-based theatres, yet are still supported by the same sophisticated AV infrastructure. The key to this particular transformation is AV Stumpfl’s impressive Pixera media server platform.
“We discovered that Pixera was the ideal solution to meet our needs,” explains Grant Kruger, entertainment technical fleet supervisor of lighting for Carnival Cruise Line. “It delivers high-performance video playback and ensures a consistent and polished show experience that can be reliably repeated for many years.”
Carnival, one of the world’s leading cruise companies, currently operates Pixera on four of its 29 ships, with more scheduled soon as part of a wider plan to modernise and future-proof its video and show-control infrastructure. Among the first vessels to launch the Pixera platform were Carnival Encounter and Carnival Adventure, both debuting from Australian ports back in March 2025.
On board, passengers can find Pixera powering LED content and visual storytelling inside a various array of entertainment spaces, from the main theatres and music lounges to more intimate venues such as thecomedy clubs.
For Carnival, the appeal of Pixera lay not just in its capabilities but in its open, hardware-agnostic architecture. “One of the main factors that sets Pixera apart from other media server brands is that you can own your own hardware with it,” Kruger says. “Pixera provides us with the flexibility to utilise our own custom-built servers, which is essential to our workflow. We currently manage the full technical operations in-house across 29 different cruise ships, overseeing everything from fixture maintenance to media servers.”
In the world of cruise ship operations, time is a precious commodity. Each vessel has a limited ‘drydock window’ for upgrades, often only a few days long, during which the entertainment systems must be installed, programmed and tested before the ship sails again. Pixera’s user-friendly interface and fast deployment capability proved a decisive advantage for Carnival’s team.
“We had the system up and running – show playback ready – within just three days on both the Encounter and Adventure vessels,” recalls Kruger. “We could build everything on one ship and then just walk over to the other one and deploy it instantly. That was really great.”
For a fleet spanning nearly 30 vessels worldwide, such repeatability is critically important. The Pixera system facilitates Carnival’s technicians to copy and adapt project folders from one ship to another with only minimal reprogramming required, streamlining workflow and maintaining visual consistency across the company’s floating fleet of theatres.
Cruise ships are among the most demanding environments for any AV system. Limited bandwidth, variable power conditions and salt-air corrosion can all conspire against uptime. Yet, as Kruger notes, Pixera has met these challenges with resilience. “We did have a couple of hiccups on one of our ships,” he admits. “But we were able to sort a solution really quickly by submitting a support ticket to which the Pixera team would send over a corresponding support package.”
Overall, he adds, “the stability has been exceptional. We’ve had no issues with performance inconsistencies or bugs since integration.”
A night at the opera
Modern-day theatre venues wear many imaginative hats, but few spaces embody the grandeur and technical versatility of an opera hall.
A venue such as London’s Royal Albert Hall, originally conceived for orchestral and choral performance, now serves as a multi-format hub for live entertainment of every kind. Its scale and acoustic heritage bring prestige, but also pose some unique challenges. A major stumbling block, for instance, is the ability to maintain crisp communication throughout a venue that was designed before the invention of electricity.
It’s a challenge the Royal Albert Hall is meeting head-on through a strategic investment in its communications infrastructure. The venue recently installed a Bolero wireless intercom system from Riedel Communications as part of its ongoing modernisation of in-house technical services.
“After renting communications systems from a different manufacturer, we chose Bolero for our permanent in-house wireless intercom,” reveals Ben Evans, who was audio operations manager at the Royal Albert Hall at the time. “It’s a user-friendly system that gives clients clear, reliable audio and integrates seamlessly with the gear most of them use. That there’s no complex licence management was a significant factor in our decision, plus the system’s network-based flexibility was a key advantage over competitors’ point-to-point solutions.”
Opened in 1871, the Royal Albert Hall is one of the most recognisable performance spaces in the world. A circular Victorian masterpiece in architecture, it’s hosted everything from classical symphonies and royal galas to pop concerts, boxing matches, film screenings and ballet. The building’s 154-year-old architecture is breathtaking but presents practical issues for many production teams. The circular structure faces a constantly rotating calendar, often seeing one major event load out and another load in within 24 hours.
Evans explains that this operational pace drove the decision to expand and upgrade the hall’s communications network. “We have a reputation as a trusted technical partner in the events industry. Working with Riedel and having the Bolero comms system on board bolsters that reputation and helps us generate revenue.”
The Royal Albert Hall’s in-house technical departments are integral to its appeal. In 2018, the venue established a dedicated audio team and partnered with D&B Audiotechnik to install a permanent PA system.
It’s not just the stage managers and show callers who benefit. Bolero extends communication to every corner of production, from front-of-house and monitor engineers to lighting operators and audio crews, through a network of separate ‘rings’ tailored to each discipline. When major events require expanded capacity, such as the 2024 Laurence Olivier Awards, the system can easily scale. For example, that production needed 30 packs, plus additional Riedel Artist mainframes and panels, with Bolero integrating seamlessly into a larger network supporting over 30 users.
For its modernisation, the Royal Albert Hall remains first and foremost an acoustically sophisticated venue grounded in theatrical history. Opera houses and grand concert halls are designed to carry the human voice across vast spaces, so integrating advanced AV systems demands care.
AV for every genre
Those acoustic challenges remain consistent even when it comes to modern-day examples. Every note must reach the audience with clarity and balance wherever they’re seated, while syncing to the genre and story being told. Like the Royal Albert Hall, today’s concert halls are increasingly becoming multi-use spaces, catering to live music, theatre, classical concerts, lectures and conferences.
Even the new kids on the block demand efficient AV strategy. Vilco is a modern conference centre based in the north of Frankfurt in Bad Vilbel, which has fast become a cultural hub since opening in 2023. It serves a catchment area of almost ten million people, with events ranging from classical concerts and theatre to conferences and live music – and demands similarly rapid turnaround between performances.
At the venue’s heart is the Great Hall, featuring a retractable stage, mobile and divisible grandstand and an orchestra shell. For integrator Aveo GmbH, the task was to implement a variable acoustics system with concert-hall-quality sound that could adapt to different genres without complex manual or architectural adjustments.
64 Renkus-Heinz C Series point-source loudspeakers and eight CX112 subwoofers were therefore selected to integrate into the hall’s ceilings and walls, supporting the Amadeus Active Acoustics system. During performances, 32 discreet Audio Technica microphones capture direct and ambient sound. Their signals are processed in the Amadeus Core, amplified by Bittner Audio and distributed via the Renkus-Heinz system.
“The result is a very natural sound experience, so the audience feels fully enveloped,” explains Thorsten Rohde, co-founder of Amadeus Acoustics. Signals from the stage are also used to increase the proportion of early reflections in the overall reverberation. “This is crucial for the spatial perception transparency and speech intelligibility of choirs, for example.”
The acoustic system supports three full-hall and one smaller-hall configurations, each with presets for events ranging from chamber music to sacred performances.
“Renkus-Heinz’s unobtrusive design and natural sound is ideal for variable acoustic systems. They disappear visually yet deliver the performance needed,” explains Michael Voessing, the managing director at Mediaspro Medientechnik GmbH.
As multipurpose cultural spaces grow in number, Vilco is a model of how intelligent system design, active acoustics, flexible control and precision loudspeakers can meet even the most demanding performance requirements. This echoes the philosophy guiding such iconic venues as the Royal Albert Hall: that technology, when sensitively applied, should enhance the artistry rather than outshine it.
From support act to co-star
As theatre continues its metamorphic trajectory, one aspect is now undeniable – AV technology no longer sits behind the curtain. From LED walls blurring the boundaries between cinema and stage to media servers that bring Broadway-scale spectacle to the open sea, and acoustic systems that can transform a room at the tap of a finger, AV tech has become the beating heart of so many forms of theatre.
What is most striking is the sensitivity and creativity with which the technology can amplify the emotional aspects of a performance, while respecting the art it dutifully serves.
This feature was first published in the Winter 2025 issue of LIVE.
