Built in 1892, ‘The Met’ was originally known as the Metropole Theatre and Dance Hall and was built to provide entertainment for the thriving coal mining town of Abertillery. As the coal mining industry disappeared, the city’s prosperity declined to lead to the building to fall into disrepair and, eventually closing in the 1990’s.

Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council, with local societies and organisations, worked hard to obtain funding to begin a refurbishment project in 1999. We joined the project in 2007 to install a full performance package to the 216 seat theatre.

For this project:

• Designed an appropriate sound and lighting specification with particular attention to the building’s listed status.
• Manufactured and installed bespoke fixed internally wired bars to the front of house area. An additional two lighting bars to the sides of the building: as the Victorian cast columns are listed and could not be directly attached to, bespoke bracketry was designed to mount the side lighting bars.
• Installed raise and lower flying lines above the stage area, carrying internally wired bars to support flexible Tungsten lighting. Both hemp and winch hoists were employed to offer optimum flexibility and support a variety of loads. A plug and socket system allows the ability to relocate bars to any flying lines as dictated by the needs of the shows.
• Installed 72 channels of digital dimmers using three Zero 88 Chilli dimmer systems.
• Installed backstage paging and visual show relay system infrastructure including equipment.
• Built sound equipment rack housing mixing desk, 2 x CD player and four channels graphic equaliser as part of the 5kw sound reinforcement system.
• Installed audio tie lines infrastructure and patch bay systems.
• Designed backstage paging systems to meet customer requirements.
• Full wiring and cabling systems.
• Installed tracking and drapes to stage.
• In addition to the installation, wealso provided full testing, commissioning, and demonstration of all equipment.