Back to NewsTwo venues at Adelaide Festival Centre multi-purpose arts centre complex are now benefitting from new Anolis LED house lighting installations – featuring over 200 fixtures from Anolis’s highly flexible Ambiane range.
This has transformed the audience experience in the 2000-capacity Festival Theatre and Dunstan Playhouse, which seats 590, and resulted in an approximately 50% power reduction in addition to producing a beautiful, smooth, even wash of illumination across these two largest performance spaces.
Adelaide Festival Centre’s head of technical and production Nathan Luscombe explained that the original 1973 house lighting installation was still in service, consisting primarily of PAR 56s and other downlights – all incandescent – which after 50 years or more of service needed replacing.
The time had arrived to transition to a more effective and sustainable LED solution, which is also a government-driven initiative, so they started looking for the best solution.
“Professional high-grade dimming was high on our list of requirements for the new lighting,” elucidated Nathan. “We tested numerous products that snapped off or on during the last 5%, - 10% of the dimming curve, and with a system life expectancy of around 10 years, it was vital to get details like this correct with any new installation.”
Nathan also pushed hard for Adelaide Festival Centre’s environmental / architectural lighting to be DMX or DMX over Ethernet controlled, learning from their experience at Her Majesty’s Theatre, another venue in Adelaide also run by the AFC, that this would be technically beneficial.
He also wanted colour changing lights as these opened numerous imaginative possibilities, including bespoke lighting of the venue for showcases, special occasions and immersive moments. Together with the DMX / Ethernet control options, this would also allow incoming productions to integrate the house lighting into their own systems if desired.
These requirements were to help optimise the space for today’s contemporary production standards, and Anolis ticked all the boxes.
The new lighting schemes were designed by Eddie Galak from Anolis’s Australian distributor, Jands, who developed an aesthetic that met the client’s requirements, together with a final proposal and extensive modelling.
Eddie noted that Nathan and his team were impressed with the options on angles and lensing available with the Anolis products, as well as the quality and vibrance of the light output.
Another MUST was that the signature white walk-in look should be 3200K … a bit cooler than standard, however they were keen to replicate the previous house lighting look, and Ambiane’s precisely tuneable whites were another massive plus here for choosing Anolis.
The individual fixture breakdown includes 12 x Anolis Ambiane XP56 Recessed units with 45° lenses; 56 x Ambiane XP56 Recessed luminaires – 36 with 45° and 20 with 60° lenses RGBW (3200K); 93 x Ambiane MP111s, 75 Recessed with 80° lenses and 18 Recessed with 60° lenses, all RGBW (3200K) and with Custom RAL Trim; and 36 x Ambiane MP111 Surface Mount 60° lensed RGBWs (also 3200K).
A combination of these luminaires is used across both venues.
In Festival Theatre, they are installed in multiple positions – in the ceiling, under the bridges, recessed on the balconies, under the boxes and in up / down configurations grazing along the walls. The scalloped side column covers were replaced as part of the general room refurbishment and interior upgrade, and the new Anolis fixtures are mounted in the up and down positions complete with bespoke covers for heritage compliance.
In Dunstan Playhouse, the new fixtures are installed on five different levels and under the balcony, also retrofitted into the previous lighting spaces.
So, the versatility of the Ambiane range won the bid as it ensured lighting could be contained and focused, achieving the amazing new uniform coverage across the two auditoriums, and as they mostly fitted into the existing house lighting system holes, this greatly assisted the installation process, especially with it being a heritage-listed building.
Nathan highlights how the house lights can now be run at around 70% intensity to produce the requisite 150 / 160 white Lux levels (200 / 220 for colours), leaving plenty of headroom and removing the need for staff to work at heights to replace broken bulbs.
Eddie – who has specified and designed Anolis lighting solutions for several leading auditoriums in Australia – mentions another advantage of the Anolis Ambiane range is that the power supplies are available locally if needed.
Lighting control for these two venues is through ETC Paradigm. The lights are on their own networks but can be hooked into a production lighting network / console extremely easily.
The new lighting installation was completed by ITE, who have previously worked with Eddie at Llewellyn Hall in Canberra, and who Nathan commented were “excellent – helpful and knowledgeable, understood how we function and had worked with Anolis before.”
The new look for both venues is a big hit with the public and with staff at the Adelaide Festival Centre, as the rooms in general feel brighter, crisper, more modern and more comfortable for audiences enjoying the performances and entertainment.
Ends.
Date of issue: 14th October 2026
Photos are by Ben Clark, and courtesy of Adelaide Festival Centre
