Chelmsford City Theatres Upgrade with Claypaky

Chelmsford City Theatres have invested in new state-of-the-art lighting and projection equipment to be used across their two venues, Civic Theatre and Cramphorn Studio, both located in Essex.

The Civic is a 505 seat theatre which offers a wide range of large scale professional, touring and amateur performances throughout the year, from classical drama and dance to eclectic music and all time family favourites. The Cramphorn Studio, adjacent to the Civic, is an intimate studio theatre, seating up to 177 people. It offers a range of smaller scale professional touring theatre, live music and lunchtime concerts, as well as being renowned for its innovative mix of art house, world and mainstream film screenings.

Looking for a range of high-quality moving lights to upgrade the units available at the venue,

David Digby, Operations Manager at Chelmsford City Council, worked alongside A.C. Entertainment Technologies’ (AC-ET) Andy Mahaffey, to find the ideal solution. After trialling a number of products, they chose to invest in a range of Claypaky fixtures, including; Axcor Profile 400, Axcor Spot 400 and Mini B’s.

David commented; “We were very impressed with the quality and price of the Claypaky equipment. The Axcor does everything we need from a spot/profile, and in our opinion is better quality than the more expensive products we tested during a week of intensive trialling within our venue. The Mini-Bs are cracking units for the price and even more so for the size. We certainly feel that choosing the Claypaky equipment got us more for our money in both quantity and quality.”

AC-ET also supplied Chelmsford Theatres with powerful Christie laser projectors, to replace their current units.

David continued; “Christie are industry leaders in projection and the pair of units we got are very impressive – much brighter and more efficient than our previous projectors. We looked at so many options to try and do a range of different jobs around our venues and the lens options and brightness available in the Christie projectors couldn’t be beaten, in our opinion.”

“It was a pleasure to work with David and his team to ensure they found the right products for them. We pride ourselves on assisting our customers to find a solution to fit within their brief and budget. I look forward to seeing these new units in action soon.” Commented Andy.

“Overall we were very impressed with the quality of the products. The team are very excited to get cracking and put the new equipment to use on some shows. Andy and his colleagues have been brilliant. We had all the kit onsite for as long as we needed it to work out what we wanted. It was really easy to get information and support throughout the process. They were always on hand to help with any questions or issues…top notch service all round really!” Concluded David.