The Cambridge Town Hall is a multipurpose community hall that was built in 1907 and is of significant historical importance. Located in the heart of the Cambridge township, about 24km Southeast of Hamilton City in the North Island of New Zealand, the building comprises of the main hall and stage, several side rooms and a kitchen. The town's visitor information centre is housed in one of the attached rooms.

A major project in 2001 to upgrade the building included seismic strengthening, rewiring, redecorating, upgrading of the stage facilities and exterior landscaping. Adena provided theatre consultancy services, supplied the stage lighting equipment and co-ordinated specialist theatre contractors to install the new house curtain and rigging for the new FOH spot bar.

The auditorium lighting consists of two separate systems to provide the range of flexibility required for such a multipurpose venue. The main system includes the centrepiece and wall lights, all of which are fitted with incandescent lamps controlled by Theatrelight Moodset dimmer units. The Moodsets provide three preset levels and off with an automatic ten second fade between levels. The second system comprises of metal-halide downlights recessed into the ceiling. These downlights are switched on when high levels of light are required.

The original mechanism for raising and lowering the curtain comprised of sixteen wire ropes, numerous pulleys and a hand winch, all of which had to be replaced to correct reliability and safety concerns. The new mechanism is a completely new development by John Herber's that eliminates most of the wires and pulleys and the need for a winch. Operation of the curtain now uses the familiar hand-line and rope brake typical of many counterweighted theatre systems.

The new electrical installation (photo below) is designed for optimum user convenience and safety. Located in the prompt side corner all essential controls are at the stage managers finger tips. The manila hand-line and rope lock for raising and lowering the house curtain can also be seen next to the edge of the curtain.

The stage lighting dimmers are controlled by a Theatrelight Starlet DMX control panel. The Starlet provides the functionality of a 12-channel 2-preset manual lighting desk with a dipless crossfader in a very compact unit. For this installation we mounted the Starlet onto the inside lid of a standard lockable electrical enclosure to provide a level of security and dust protection. The enclosure opens downward to provide a convenient "desk" for the Starlet to be operated from.

Two Theatrelight Rack-Pack 12-channel DMX dimmer packs are permanently wired to socket outlets on the FOH spot bar and adjacent to the on-stage spot bar positions. Most of the dimmer channels are wired to socket outlets at more than one location to optimise the flexibility of the installation without installing an excessive number of dimmers.

When being controlled by the Starlet, the DMX addresses for the dimmer packs are set to run both packs in parallel to give twelve controlled channels from the FOH spot bar to the Cyc bar outlets. When the dimmer packs are set to concurrent DMX addresses twenty four control channels are spread from the FOH spot bar to Cyc bar outlets and any DMX lighting desk can be used to control the system. A spare three phase 32-Amp socket is provided to allow an additional dimmer pack to be brought in by hall users when necessary.