Schauspielhaus Bochum upgrades with dLive
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Schauspielhaus Bochum is one of the biggest and most acclaimed theatres in Germany. Founded in 1907, it was completely destroyed in World War II and rebuilt in the 1950s with a capacity of 811 seats. A second theatre – the 400-capacity Kammerspiele – opened its doors in 1966. Former directors of the theatre include Peter Zadek, Claus Peymann and Leander Haußmann.
Christoph Bonk has worked in the sound department for 28 years and has seen many technical changes during that time. His final goal as technical director was to guide the theatre into the future of digital technology and networking.
“In Bochum we offer many different genres – classical theatre and musicals but also concerts, so we have to be very flexible in the sound department,” explains Bonk. “We realised that our workflow wasn’t up-to-date anymore and we’ve been looking for the perfect solution for this theatre to address that. We needed flexibility, redundancy, good sound and wanted to be futureproof – dLive ticked all these boxes for us.”
The two main venues deploy three dLive surfaces each, an S7000, S3000 and C1500 in the Main Theatre and an S7000, C3500 and a C1500 in the Kammerspiele, plus various MixRacks and stage boxes, which are connected via CAT and fibre networks. The theatre also uses Qu series mixers in its smaller spaces and for receptions or speeches.
A crucial part for a theatre mixing system is the number of auxes for managing loudspeakers and this is where dLive delivers for Bonk: “It’s very important for us to assign our speakers in a flexible way. At the moment we use 47 auxes in the Main Theatre, 28 at Kammerspiele plus monitor speakers and sound boxes for special effects. With dLive we can address each speaker individually. With dLive we also laid the foundation for surround sound which will most likely become more important in the near future.”
(Jim Evans)
