Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre
Simply magical...
- Role
- Production and Site Management
- Location
- Chester, NW England
- With
- Storyhouse
- Date
- 2016 and 2017 seasons
We production and site managed two seasons of a magical outdoor theatre, in Dark Olive's first two years
Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre is run by Storyhouse (previously Chester Performs) – a leading arts producer based in Chester. They create, produce and stage arts projects in and around the city.
The Open Air Theatre is one of the most incredible temporary built theatre seasons you will ever experience. We consulted on the site build, front of house and operational delivery across the 2016 and 2017 seasons. Dark Olive had only just formed; the working relationship behind it went back years before that.
Our work included designing the backstage area, managing the site build, installing site electrics and ensuring the whole process worked over a 6 week season.
There were many challenges associated with keeping this operation running. The ground was a sandy soil with ancient Roman roads less than 30cm below. Heavy rain meant a pleasant front of house could suddenly become a quagmire, which could remain damaged for the rest of season. Our solution was to devise a series of shallow temporary ditches around the tent structures, which would take the water run off away.
Another issue at the start was that there was no electricity or water supply on site.
Water bowsers with 12v water pumps were used to ensure we had a functional kitchen mess.
The answer came from somewhere else entirely. We had designed and toured a solar powered cinema, stage and bar venue, and running a venue on nothing but the sun teaches you the arithmetic of a battery: what a load actually draws, how long a bank really lasts, and how little of the day you genuinely need to be generating. So to overcome the problem of a generator running 24hrs a day, we built a shed with a battery powered UPS inverter setup. This meant we only needed to run the generator during show times, which we used to charge the batteries. Once the show was finished we turned off the generator and the inverter kicked in, which was sufficient to keep the Front of House fridges and site cabins powered for the rest of the day.
The result of this setup was reducing generator time from 24 hrs to 5 hrs a day. At a gallon per hr, this meant saving 133 gal a week, which over 6 weeks was 800 gal or 4,000 lt fuel saved.
