The evening was staged in the Olympic Tae-Kwon-Do stadium on the outskirts of the city, between Athens and the port of Piraeus and was attended by 1,300 guests. The ground-supported trussing grid was used for rigging all stage lighting, video and audio equipment for the dinner and preceding presentation. The low structural weight loadings of the building ruled out flying, so a four legged ground support system was used, which had to be very wide to ensure that the two downstage legs didn't interfere with sightlines to the letter-box style set.
To achieve the adequate strength across this span, Summit used approximately 75 metres of it's largest 52 x 76 cm Thomas SuperTruss. Summit also erected eight trussing goal-posts around the upper level (on the balcony), running right around the building, to provide table lighting positions.
The entire auditorium was draped all the way around the building in black serge cloth to cover the retractable seating and to improve the acoustics - the complete task consuming about 250 metres of soft goods.
Summit's team of four was led by Jon Bray and took five days to complete the get in and build period. They also rigged and flew a series of 10 different lightweight trussing shapes out over the auditorium and seating area for additional audience lighting. Quarter tonne CM Prostar motors were used throughout to keep the weight expedient.
Summit was working for UK-based production company Jigzaw. It was their second ESM for this client, following on from a highly successful event in Prague last year. Nicola Scotchmer produced the event for Jigzaw, production manger was Chris Venn, lighting designer Pete Edwards, sound designer Dick Sinclair, video designer Oliver Phipps and scenic design by Andrew Gordon from Upstage.
(Chris Henry)
