Thornden Hall, Chandlers Ford

First hired out by USD for Pure Dance 2023. Thornden Hall is an off campus, performing arts centre located in Chandlers Ford. It is owned by Thornden School and is used by the teachers and students for assemblies, lessons and school performances. Outside these times however it runs as its own independent theatre. Regularly hosting movies, comedy nights, touring theatre groups and orchestras.

Thornden hosts a 395 seater, proscenium style auditorium with a small apron. Lighting, Projection, Sound and Video is all controlled from the furthest back row. Adjacent to the auditorium are 2 Drama classrooms, a Gym, Dance Studio and a conference room. There is also a library and 2 music rooms, however these were not available for use. The auditorium is wheelchair accessible and has toilets located close by.

There is a Video and Cans feed available to all rooms.

Thornden has a loading bay that is 1.2m high from the road level on the west/stage side of the building. It also has level access just slightly further up via double doors on the same side. Finally, there is access via the main entrance through double doors, located on the east/audience side. All doors into the Auditorium are 1m 55cm wide and 2m 20cm high, with 2 downstage of the apron on the FOH side mainly for the audience, and 1 in each wing for cast and crew. There are also 2 single doors at the back of FOH for the audience.

There is limited space for flight case storage in corridors. It is suggested they are reloaded into vehicles or put in dressing rooms. However, for Pure Dance we found putting them on the upstage choir riser worked well.

The stage is trapezium shaped, has no rake, level to the foyer floor and is a sprung oak floor & usually covered in a black vinyl Harlequin dance floor. There is a two-step choir riser upstage, for Pure Dance 2023 this was not removed as it was behind the star cloth being used, and would make for a slower set-up. Dimensions are attached here: . Thornden Hall’s technicians have disclosed that their provided floor and room plans were not accurate to the space, use it with caution and verify measurements for planning critical infrastructure. The following dimensions were verified:

Stage depth is 7m 70cm from the front of the apron to the choir riser

• Stage depth is 10m 30cm from the front of the apron to the upstage wall
• Downstage width (past curtains) is 16m 60cm from the left to right wall
• Upstage wall is 10m 58cm wide.
• Front curtain opening is 13m wide.
• Wing to Wing is 1.3m
• Front curtain centreline to 1st curtain rail is 5m
• Apron boundary to Front curtain centreline is 1.5m

There is curtain masking both sides of the stage, as well as a curtain going across the top to hide the truss system. These can be removed for more space. In addition, the wings can be folded back as they are on a hinge. There are 2 curtain rails on the US truss, they can hold starcloth, drape and cyc. There isn’t, however, a pulley system to pull tab along these rails, this has to be done by someone pulling it along from the ground.

Thornden also have a flown projector screen; however, this wasn’t used in Pure Dance 2023 as it would of taken too long for it to roll down in between dances.

Thornden have an ETC Ion running 3 universes, with universe 3 running on an Entech node. For Pure Dance 2023, we avoided using the Entech node as it struggles to work with Chamsys lighting consoles. Instead, ethernet runs were made from the lighting desk at the rear of the theatre, to stage left’s wing. And into an 8 channel node on ArtNet. Note that any light derigged, must be re-rigged and re-focused before the end of your hire-period, it's important that this is factored into both general plans as well as lighting ones.

Thornden also have 5 patch panels, each panel carries part of their network and 1 universe of DMX. There is one stage left, another stage right, 2 behind the choir riser and one under the chairs in row AA.

Universe 3 drops down onto all trusses, as well as feeding DMX on the SL & SR Boom, Advance and rear scaff bars.

These fixtures in the house rig are a very old 14 year old fixture which don't have an online manual sitting around. However, the following information is useful.

• 181 LEDs
• Power 30w
• Data 3pin DMX
• Weight 2.8kg

Importantly, they are a 4 channel fixture Dim/Mode-R-G-B. In other words, the 1st address of the fixture will control intensity until you go too high, in which case it'll strobe! It's worth either parking, creating a dimmer curve to max, or setting the fixture profiles dimmer attribute to max; at value 189. At 190 or above they'll go into Strobe mode and Sound to Light. RBG channels are 0-255 as normal.

The following is information sent by Thornden hall's technicians from an E-mail:

Side lighting booms
We have 8 side lighting booms, usually used with 1 x Source 4 Jr Zoom Profiles, and 1 x Cantata F or a smaller Fresnel. They have a 4 channel DMX dimmer attached and plug into the ring main sockets on the sides of the stage.

Concert Lighting
We have installed 20 LED floods above the stage, controlled by a switch on stage. There are also 6 ArcLED floods controlled from the lighting desk.

DMX Routing

Universe 1 goes from the desk to the splitter at the bottom of the left rack. It is connected to all the patch panels around the floor of the stage and controls fixtures on dimmers.

Universe 2 goes to a splitter above the middle of the control desk, wall buffers. There are 2 sockets either side of the Adv IWB. Each of the short booms has DMX inside the black end box, but it isn’t yet terminated to a socket. On the FOH bar, on the SL end you should find a plug on the baffle that is directly under the IWB. The SR plug has been plugged into the IWB, allowing DMX in the centre section of the IWB. ADV bar has 4 sockets, two at either end. At the moment, each slip has one feed each, and the ARC leds take a third.

Universe 3 is via the node in the undercroft. U3 has a 2-way split down onto all of the trusses and has a few colour source pars occupying their universe.

At a pinch, you could send Uni 1 directly to the dimmers, patch Uni 2 to the splitter at the control desk and use the undercroft feed to run the splitters down there - I am going to install a cable ready to do this, just in case!

Luke to add