The New Royal Playhouse in Copenhagen opened this year on the 17th of February and Visual act has been instrumental in making this happen. The theatre is situated at the end of Nyhavn, right on the water.

The Royal Danish Playhouse: Main Stage

The project has been a milestone for Visual act as it has been one of our biggest to date; 106 axes of movement are controlled by the Visual Act Control System.

The main stage is comprised of four large podiums 16×4meters. With a stroke of 5.5 meters they can move 32tons at half a meter per second. The podiums are suspended in a mechanical cradle and moved with a large hydraulic cylinder that lies on the basement floor.

Many of the large axes within the theatre are operated with hydraulic pressure. For this part of this project we were happy to work together with Bosch Rexroth. All of the Hydraulic axes are also controlled by the intriguing BoschRexroth MAC 8, with programming by Visual act.

The main stage area can be acoustically isolated from the side stage and rear stage areas with the help of three very large doors that are operated by three equally large hydraulic winches situated high up on the North, South and West walls. The Rear acoustic door is 18×8.3×0.28meters large and weighs 9.5tons, which is a fairly big door by anybody’s standard; we can move it at 0.3m/s.

The Royal Danish Playhouse: Machine Room

There are six light bridges moved by hydraulic winches, five smaller light bridges with a capacity for 600kg and a stroke of 19.1meter and the main one that has a 5ton capacity and gantries for lighting personnel. There is also a smaller light bridge in the auditorium that is controlled by an electric winch supplied by Demag.

All of the electric motor driven axes within the theatre are controlled and moved by the state of the art Indradrive from BoschRexroth over a profibus network.

Each one of the 55 flybars can move 500kg at 1.8 meters per second with a stroke of 24m. Each flybar is suspended from five cables. There are 15 point hoists that can move 700kg at 1.8m/s, these can be attached to scenery or people.

With the Visual act 3D System the point hoists can be grouped together to form an object that can be attached to a single point and be moved around the stage. Flying people is one of our specialties. Now you don’t just have to sing about the ‘Flight of the Valkaries’, you can get her airborne as well.

An alternative with the point hoists is to group them together in order to lift a heavier piece of scenery. The Visual act Control System can easily synchronize these movements.

Det Konglige Teater Skuespillhuset opened on time with a contemporary performance of Hamlet, directed by a Norwegian, actors from Denmark and a state of the art control system from Sweden (Visual act) a fine tribute to Scandinavia’s newest and most modern Theatre.

A highly visual performance about a man looking at life’s major and minor peculiarities.  Secluded from the rest of world, he sets off inventing his own makeshift universe.  But his creation seems hard to control, constantly slipping out of his hands.

The performance is conceived in close collaboration with Visual act’s crew, using their 3D flying rig, platforms and equipment, combining cutting edge stage technology with visual theatre.

Stage hands and Technicians from Dramatiska Institutet in Stockholm.

Produced by Visual actin collaboration with Dramatiska Institutet/Anders Larsson.

After the performance Visual act staff will be present for information.

Please email Günay Kulbay at gunay(at)visualact(dot)se for tickets or further information.

Limited amount of tickets. R.S.V.P. before 7th November

At the Jewish theatre in Stockholm, Visual act has been involved in the highly acclaimed production ‘The Dogs of Prague’.

For this show we were commissioned to provide a moving platform on which the audience of 50 people would sit. The front and rear of the platform have independent motorized winch control enabling the platform to be tilted twenty degrees forwards or backwards.

This system has the added advantage of being able to tip the entire audience onto the stage at the end of each performance.

The winches we used from Demag are normally used in large cranes to move containers for the shipping industry and the Fuji Frenic Lift driver is used worldwide in elevators, so the risks were minimized.

The beautiful old stage of The Danish Royal theatre is located in the heart of Copenhagen. In summer of 2007 Visual act upgraded the machinery and installed a new control system.

The old stage ‘Gamle Scen’ had considered replacing the complete winch system as it has been on the go for quite some time and the DC motor drives were not supported any longer. Thankfully, Visual act was able to utilize nearly all of the original motors and maintain most of the original mechanics.

The Old Stage: Looking through Flybars on to Main Stage

Visual act replaced the control system and using Sprint DC drives, supplied the much needed upgrade at a far reduced cost. New drives and electronics were installed for control of the DC motors on 37 fly bar winches. To monitor the position of the fly bars; a new arrangement with an angular gear, absolute encoder and limit switch was mounted on each winch. Two Profibus communication channels were provided; one for drives and one for absolute encoders and safety i/o.

The six existing lighting bridges were upgraded to increase the load capacity to 800 kg. This involved replacing motors, gearboxes and brakes. New electrical cabinets with servo amplifiers and electronics were also installed. In order to increase safety, slack wire detection was added. Angular gear arrangements similar to those used on the fly bars were installed for the light bridge encoders also.

The revolving stage was inspected and fitted with new encoders and a very old motor was removed in order to increase the degree of efficiency and reduce risk of fire. The delivery also included four completely new movable point hoists; the point hoists have individual control cabinets that are electrically similar to the light bridge control cabinets and are also connected to the control system through Profibus.

Visual act Touring Desk. On rail.

Visual act Touring Desk. On stand.

The Visual act Control System is being installed in more and more theatres throughout Scandinavia and is becoming the new standard in theatrical motion control. The system comes with two types of control desks. The Visual act Advanced Desk includes a full keyboard and ergonomically designed for work over longer periods. The second type, Visual act Touring Desk uses a touch screen and is more compact and suitable for operation from a variety of locations. At the Danish Royal Theatre two touring desks are rail mounted on one of the galleries.

The control system operates all movement in the theatre through a combined Profibus and Ethernet network.

The networks allow for communication to all devices in the system. The Ethernet is based on the concept of a double redundant ring. A number of hot swap boxes, for control desks, are placed at various points in the stage area. A double emergency stop circuit is connected in series through all the e-stop switches in the system and will cause the system to stop all motion if activated.

If your theatre is full of steam powered motor control technology and the spare part factory was closed fifty years ago, it could be time for an upgrade.

Visual act have delivered their Advanced Stage Wagon System for use in the Muziektheater in Amsterdam. 

Originally within the Muziektheater a system of large stage wagons were used to transport scenery from side and backstage areas. Each wagon was 4×16m and was pushed from area to area with the use of trucks and air cushions. Usually four wagons would be joined together to give a 16×16m movable stage.

Visual act modified the large wagons and incorporated two drive unit cassettes into each wagon thus enabling much easier movement of these large stages. The air cushions are still used, but the motion can be controlled easily by one operator.

The position of the wagon is determined by the use of a laser guidance and can give accuracy to +/- 5mm, but in order for the wagons to park correctly over the existing stage elevators at the Muziektheater Visual act developed a unique complementary magnetic positioning system. With the magnetic positioning system Visual act have managed to provide parking accuracy of +/- 2mm.

The stage technicians have also been hard at work creating their own wagons using the Visual act drive units and each time we visit the theatre it is always a surprise to see what fantastic objects they have moving around the stage.