Right. So right now we're in the stalls
of the auditorium. So here is where you probably
see some of the projects we've we've delivered recently.
It's a lot of red velvet and gills and the lights are what
catches you and gives the atmosphere.
Yeah, so the the house lights as we call them.
Welcome to the APM podcast. APM is the chartered body for
the project profession. My name is Emma DaVita and I'm
the editor of Project APM's quarterly journal and your host
for this podcast. I go on location to bring you
the story of what it takes to deliver a big renewal programme
at one of EU KS most important cultural institutions.
I'm here in rainy day in January at the Royal Ballet and Opera in
central London. For any of you who've come to
watch your performance here, you'll be familiar with the
sumptuous red velvet and gilt auditorium.
Behind the Scenes tells a different story of hundreds of
performers and backstage soft working way to deliver a
punishing programme of performances.
Today it's La Traviata. While they rehearsed and set up
for this evening's production, I'm going backstage to delve
into a £40 million ten year renewal programme to find out
about how it's being project managed, the challenges and what
it takes to make it a success. Royal Ballet and Opera is an APM
corporate partner so it takes project management seriously,
especially when it comes to the projects involved to replace the
ageing and increasingly failing backstage infrastructure.
All this project work has to carry on while the teams of
artists, creative and technical and front of health staff work
together to ensure the curtain rises on time, day in, day out.
This requires a level of mature project management skills, so
come with me to find out more part.
Of what we had to deliver was actually keep in the sense the
warmth. I go through the stage door
entrance to find Musa Halame, the technical estate renewal
programme lead, who reports to the CEO Heather Walker.
He joined in 2018 to work on the upgrade of the power fly system
above the stage, which is the structure from which all the
lighting hangs, and became the project that led to the five
year renewal programme to upgrade the 25 year old systems
that is being worked on right now.
Way to make sure that we've got, so I've got oversight of the
Sage machinery side, the sound video broadcast and the lighting
side of it all. So I've got three PMS who look
after each of them specific areas and I've kind of got
oversight of everything. I try my best to prioritise
projects, budgets and so on, meet timelines, see where
there's efficiencies across the projects and try our best to
kind of work together when we're, you know, for example,
working in the same areas that, you know, both projects are
aware of each other's scope and just try and find efficiencies
that way. I ask him what he enjoys about
the work. I think it's the excitement of
that challenge, knowing that I feel like when we take a project
on, even when we're just in the concept phase and the
feasibility phase, we know we're going to deliver it.
We know there's going to be something new next season at the
start of the season that will be delivered and the journey
between now and then, we know it's going to be rough, but it's
it's achievable and we know we're going to end up with the
right product at the other end. So flexibility is, is very key.
I think you, you've got to be a quite a quick learner when it
comes to just learning different aspects of theatre,
understanding why it's important to people, understanding why you
can't interrupt their operation, understanding the impact.
So I think that's it. So it's all about understanding
the bigger picture, having that ability to learn it and have the
communication skills to go out to people and actually ask what
they want and make sure that you arrange the right time.
You know, there's a certain pressure, having been there
myself, you know, when you're operating during a live
performance and something doesn't work, it just feels like
the whole world's watching you and you feel this immense amount
of pressure. And I think for a successful
project manager here, they really need to empathise with
that and understand that feeling and, you know, do their very
best to make sure that our end users never go through that.
Russo is working on the most critical part of the building,
the stage. When it's not filled with
performers rehearsing during the day for one, maybe 2
productions, as well as putting on an evening performance, it's
filled with everyone backstage who has a job to get done,
whether it's working on the lighting or moving props around.
That makes for a lot of highly involved stakeholders who Moosa
needs to keep on side in a collaborative way.
Communication is key, so I asked him how he approaches that.
I think it's face to face here, even though we try and send out
like monthly status updates of each projects or what projects
are coming up. We share the full programme of
the renewals programme of what's happening in each year.
But yeah, it's, it's general communication going up, talk to
them about what will be happening.
And then we really like to get workshops in as soon as possible
so that people can actually have their input.
Because at the end of the day, we're delivering for them.
We're not deciding what they need.
They're telling us what they need.
And we're trying our best way to deliver that.
So it's keeping that sense of ownership maybe with them.
So even though they feel like they own that part of the stage,
for example, which they do, we want them to own the process of
changing it too. So we we empower them in that
way, I suppose to tell us what they need.
The key objective behind it is really business continuity.
We don't want the stage to start where things have been
overworked probably over the years, components have become
obsolete. We've looked at that ourselves
and said, right, OK, well, how can we replace this in a manner
that won't affect the performances?
How can we improve things to meet today's standards at the
same time? So, yeah, it's a programme
that's focused pretty much on business continuity, increasing
resilience. We're definitely looking at
sustainability as part of obviously all the projects that
we do. It's particularly lighting and
we're trying to improve health and safety.
So again, we've got this advantage of having 25 years of
experience of people using the same systems and they can tell
us that it's all well and fun when it's working and we're
we're during the performance, but when we come to maintain
this, we can't get to this part or that part.
So we take that into consideration when we're doing
our upgrades. And yeah, I think the last point
that we always mention is obviously value for money.
We want to make sure that, you know, even the way we're
delivering it sometimes can be slightly more expensive because
we're doing it overnight. We're not doing it in a bulk
when we're doing it like just in a phased manner, but we just can
we justify that extra bit of cost and if it keeps the
performances going, usually we can.
The main benefit we're hoping to realise, and we've realised
already, but I hope to realise a bit more once we've done more
upgrades, is integration between different systems.
So everything is IP based, everything is on a network.
So to have them all talking to each other, all move away from
manual procedures really, and have tracking between machinery,
lights, video, sound, that's all something that's achievable.
It's already achievable now with some of the upgrades we've done,
but it will be even more achievable ideally with all this
new technology coming our way. With these upgrades, we'd like
to be able to have a virtual stage essentially where we could
plot anything with a creative once they're happy, that can
just happen on stage because it's just transferring files at
that point. You, you get the risk out of the
way earlier and the earlier you get rid of it, the better or the
early reduce the risk, the better.
And that's literally the only way we can work here.
There's there's no other way. There's no way we could just
turn up with a, you know, with the new systems, and fingers
crossed it works. As you might imagine, access to
the stage is extremely limited. Moosa and his team usually have
three weeks in the summer when the performers have a break to
get work done. Otherwise it's overnight work.
This makes for projects that are front loaded with the focus on
preparation, prototyping and risk mitigation so that when
they have the green light to get on stage, everything goes to
plan. The show must go on no matter
what. Deadlines can never slip when
tickets are sold and performers booked five years in advance.
We just really, really focus our energy on that, that initial
part, that design. I think that design phase when
we can, like it varies from project to project, but when we
can really focus on getting prototypes through the door,
showing them to stakeholders, getting their feedback.
And if you know, there's any tweaks or anything like that,
going back again and getting, you know, version 2, come
through the door, show everyone and really try and get that sign
off. Sometimes we push our limits,
our time limits because obviously you've got to get
signed off and then you've got to start manufacturing the
installation. But I think it's pushing them
deadlines and being realistic when you, when you draw out your
schedule to say, you know, I need an answer by this date and
here's my contingency, 2 weeks or so on.
But beyond that, you're not going to deliver the projects on
time. So it's being very aware of that
schedule. It's kind of almost dictated to
us in many ways because of the stage, but it's just working,
working around the stage schedule, making sure the
project schedule aligns. But we try and get the end users
in and people that really know the schedule of the stage of how
long it takes to build a set, what's required.
So really the experts on the other side that are actually,
you know, putting the show together.
It is a hybrid approach of, you know, both kind of like the
waterfall linear approach and also, like I said, the agile
iterative kind of approach is also used.
Because I think especially when we're talking about prototypes
and design, that kind of front heavy approach to projects, we
really push no designs perfect first time around as much as we
try and input to that when it's, you know, on a screen and so on.
When we see the physical prototype, there's always
feedback. And sometimes it's, it's
literally like just a practicality of right, OK,
you've built this thing, it's perfect.
But now when I go up to the space to install it, I can't fit
my hand in to get a bolt in and say, all right, this isn't going
to work. So we need to rethink A bracket.
But it's trying to squeeze as many of them kind of suggestions
in as possible before signing off the final, you know, design.
So that's to me quite an iterative process, which, you
know, a lot of people see it with software.
It's like, oh, go back, do that again.
We try and turn it around with just prototypes and you know,
once we've got something physically here, we're trying
our best to turn it around to the the product that we can sign
off as soon as possible. So then we can transform into
more of a linear process at that point.
And then we know what we're going to set.
We're going to place an order. Here's potentially our delivery
date and here's our installation date.
So yeah, it's a bit of a mixture of both, definitely.
Moosa reports to Heather Walker, the COO who is project director
of the Royal Ballet and Opera's Open Up project, completed in
2018 when the front of house was transformed to make it fit for
the 21st century. I'm very lucky, I think with
Heather, who I reported to the CEO, she's like very
understanding. She's got a very good project
background herself. So it's, yeah, it's a lot
easier. It's it's, it's a really good
culture. I've got to say, you know,
working here and it's, it's probably enabled me to become a
programme manager by being in this kind of environment.
I ask him what he enjoys about project managing in a place like
this. Like a lot of our backgrounds
are working on stage and new productions and the reason you
do it, it's like it's all about the evenings and the weekends
and people are like, why would you do that?
But once you put a show on and you do like what we call the
press night, the opening night, and the audience are loving it,
you get such a buzz. I don't watch as many
productions as I should, but it, it's really important to know
that like I read the show report every day.
So the show report is like at the end of every show, the stage
manager will, will send out like a, a report of, you know, how
the show went, what time the curtain went up, if there was
any, any changes to the cast, but also if there's any problems
technically on stage or anything like that.
So I read that religiously every day just to make sure.
And I, you know, to me, it's really, really important to know
that anything that we've upgraded over the years is
working and that there hasn't been any problems, any kind of
show issues. And it's, it's giving the
audience what they've come to see really that's, that's really
important. That's your motivation when
you're when you do the late nights trying to get everything
up and running, you know, it needs to be perfect.
You know, you know who The Who the audience are coming into the
Royal Ballet and Opera and what they're, they're kind of level
of expectancy they've got when they come to see a production
here, what sort of quality they're after.
So you definitely, yeah, you're pushing yourself for that
reason. Even if you're working backstage
and putting a show on, you've been part of the creative team
or anything like that, you get such a buzz out of seeing the
audience react to your effects. I think in projects we're behind
the technology that allows them to do that, but we wouldn't get
the buzz at the same time, if you know what I mean.
So it's really important, like I said, to go watch some shows for
that reason to see, you know, for the project managers to
actually see what their hard work has enabled the other teams
to do and get the audience going.
From a project point of view. Like in the technical state
renewal team, we can definitely say, you know, you can say that
about all the products, sorry, all the productions.
It's we're involved in all of them, like making sure they all
continue. Like the stage elevators don't
work, there's no show, The lighting rig doesn't work,
there's no show and the comms go down, there's no show.
It's just they're all show stoppers.
And it's, and I think what we really need to be proud of is
the methodology, the way that we've delivered it without
interruption. We've gone from old to new.
So the show must always go on, as Musa says, but let's meet
George Townsend who can shine a spotlight on the lighting
upgrade projects that he's masterminding.
One of which was the task of swapping out all the
auditoriums, 960 Candelabra lights and down lights from
tungsten to LED. After a lot of research,
planning and prototyping, he swapped out a couple in the
auditorium without telling anyone be on the team whilst
they adjusted them to match what was already there.
After three months, no one could tell the difference.
So we basically hid them in the auditorium, didn't tell anyone
which ones they were, and we were tweaking the dimming curves
and things like that and the colour temperature and things
like that to match it as best we could.
So when we came to install, we already had a background of
testing and people had confidence in the products we've
chosen and things like that. So when we came to do it, we
were just replicating those little tests on a much wider
scale, lots of collaborative meetings, lots of prototype
sessions and feeding that all back to the stakeholders here.
And we had sessions in the auditorium where we said, all
right, well, one of these candles is LED.
Can you tell me which one it is? Whilst Front of House had
experienced a lot of change during the open up project, Back
of the House has been dealing with the same tech and
infrastructure for the past 25 years.
Making change happen can be daunting, as Townsend explains.
There's two groups of people. I think there are, there are
people who are very much up for change and then there are people
who are a bit scared of it. And if you've got someone who's,
you know, been working in the organiser for 20 years, they
know how thing works and then you say I'm going to bring in a
new thing. Some people can be a bit fearful
of that. So we have to put in lots of
sessions where we're explaining what we're going to be doing and
why, but also training them on the new systems before they come
in. And that was really important
for us. Equally, we have all the artists
on stage and although lights in the auditorium is probably not
the thing they're most interested in, we do feedback to
the directors of the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet and say in
the technical estate, these are the things that we're going to
have to start working on. This is how it might affect
productions and performers and the schedule and things like
that. So it's as a building, we plan
our production as five years in advance.
And there's lots of reasons for that because we share sets with
other opera houses, but obviously performers need to
know which Opera House they're in, where they're singing and
all that sort of stuff. So there's this real culture of
planning. And then the renewals team has
been created and we've just sort of dipped into that culture.
And it's, you know, same for us. We, we know that in two years
time we're going to need to do a thing.
Well, let's tell everyone now. Let's get it into the schedule.
Let's talk about how we might do it, how it might affect the
stage productions. The second project George has
been looking after is the updating of the production
lighting rig. They're the lights you see on
stage and all the systems that back them up and make them work,
he explains to me. It surpassed its lifespan.
It was becoming very difficult to support and get spare parts
for because almost everything was discontinued at that point.
So it was time to upgrade. And that's a little more
difficult for us than it sounds because we have lots of
productions in our Rep that obviously are in storage and
they come back and we replicate the lighting design as it was.
But this was the first time we were going from a, you know, a
tungsten rig to an LED rig. So one of the big challenges was
we actually had to start re lighting our shows in a virtual
world in our visual visualisation suite in our
virtual Opera House. So we actually started
relighting shows before we bought the new lights.
The big problem we would have is if we went from an old rig to
the new rig and we didn't have a virtual space, we would have to
relight every show on stage. And to do that we would have to
add technical sessions for every show.
And if you added up the hours, it'd be hundreds of hours that
we don't have. We'd have to cancel
performances. Obviously we don't want to do
that. So we do all the backbone work
in the virtual space and then when we come to stage it's sort
of tidying it up and adding in the finessing and you might
tweak some colours and, and all that sort of stuff.
We had to be able to say right, how are our lights going to the
lights that we want to buy and purchase?
How are they going to look? We had to know how it was going
to be before we do it because we have a three-week maintenance
period in the summer. So the the bit we've done so far
is we've replaced our overstage lighting bands, which are
basically our big metal structures that house that
permanent rig. We had to replace the actual
structures themselves because the old structures were too
heavy. If we took the new lights, which
of course are much heavier than the old lights because they're
not like cans with light bulbs anymore, they're basically
robots, they weigh a lot more. We'd have been massively
overweight for the winch capacity.
So we worked with a few companies, manufacturer in
Germany called Hof who make lighting trusses and things and
we designed custom structures with them and we had to get it
to the point that we basically would wheel them into the
building and install them in this three-week period.
This year we had four weeks, we had an extra week as a treat and
at the end of that four week period we go straight into the
next season. First show hits, the stage has
to work. So it's getting all of those
people together, getting your scope together, prototyping as
much as you can or you know, real world or virtual.
So by the time you get to the install you you're really
confident in what's coming through the door.
And at that point, we've put so much effort into planning the
install method as well. What are the secrets to success
to getting such a time bound project like this done, when the
usual workings of the organisation can never be
disrupted and when so many people fear the jeopardy that
this might cause? You know, comms is such a big
part of this and saying why you need to do the thing and how you
might do the thing. But we're still working on it.
Even if you're not quite ready to share the this is what we're
thinking. But you know, there's an
overview. Just getting that information
out, I found that enough people would sort of get on board that
the the people who were a bit scared would start to shift into
the group, like people would take them with them.
So it wasn't all on the project managers to pull people in.
The other thing we did that I thought was really good was in
terms of the production lighting project, we tried to involve as
many people who we could with the installation.
So the lighting team have actually helped build these
structures and, you know, put the lights on and they're the
ones who are going to be using it.
So it wasn't a case of we just wheeled it through the door and
went there you go. They knew what was coming.
They helped put it together so they understand how it works,
how it was put together, all that sort of stuff that really
helped. One of the biggest tools that's
been amazing for us is Microsoft Teams, because obviously not
only is it a tool where we can all get together in groups and
have video calls in various countries, but also, you know,
within our, our are sort of IT firewall.
We've we've allowed file sharing structures.
So if you take the lighting batons, for example, we had a
Teams channel where the structure manufacturer is
putting in drawings, the cable manufacturer is putting in
drawings, We're putting in our comments in feedback and we're
all working for the same set of documents rather than us being
the sort of people in the middle.
And you know, you come to me and I'll go back to you and say this
company said this. We're all just getting together.
We did a lot of like weekly phone calls and they might just
be half an hour and they were just in the diary.
But this project has a weekly phone call with these
manufacturers, these manufacturers for something
else. And we all just get together and
sometimes you'd all get on the call and go, there's nothing to
talk about this week. But we never took them out of
the diary. They might be 5 minutes, there
might be an hour, but they, you know that every week on a
Thursday, those manufacturers are like, oh, I've got call.
We roll Opera House at 1:00. I asked him if there were any
other lessons he learned. That's another thing I say to
project managers, don't overload yourself.
Look at what's achievable in the space.
We definitely put a lot in last summer and our biggest lesson
was actually our capacity. Although we achieved everything,
it definitely had a a toll on us as a team.
Adam Lindsay is the Project Manager at Royal Ballet and
Opera who has spent his entire career within project
management, sorting out at the BBC as a graduate trainee, but
working across different private sector organisations including
Siemens, he is responsible for the comms renewal projects.
Here he explains what it's like working at the Royal Ballet and
Opera, and how he brought himself up to speed with an
entirely new sector, as well as his advice on how to make change
happen well. I've always been very clear on
having worked for companies that provide managed services is that
project work should never be in a position where it can impact
the services and the actual business that's that's trying to
operate. So the show must go on.
And people here tend to be risk averse, a bit resistance change,
as I think most of us are, but very risk averse.
The, the schedule is so intense that people need to be able to
turn up on time, get on with their job with no delay.
Even a a short delay of a few minutes in the stage schedule
can have huge knock ONS throughout the rest of the day.
So it's a really intense place to work from that perspective.
And so everyone of course is very protective of their job and
needs to make sure that they're on that stage on time with
everything they need. So keeping those stakeholders
happy, making sure that we've identified them all.
And it's not just people that are going to be impacted by
change, it's also people that think they might be impacted by
change. I think project management, the
the theory, the discipline, the training is great, but
ultimately it's about getting people to effect change and
achieve things. So the people skills are so
important here. Most people are quite, quite
happy or at least accepting of change as long as you tell them
what's going on. What people don't don't like is
when a system or some process is changed, you know, under their
feet and without being consulted or informed.
That's not not everyone. Projects shouldn't necessarily
be run as a sort of a democracy, OK, You're going to have people
in charge, you're going to have budget holders, you're going to
have the the senior management in the organisation who want to
effect that change. Not everyone at grassroots level
is going to have a say. That's just not how projects
are. But keeping people informed is
critical. What's great here is that people
are quite open. They will tell you their
concerns. There are very, very, very few
times people are going to sit down and just not give you any
feedback whatsoever. And you think this is either
going really well or they don't understand what's going on.
So the fact that I think on the systems level, talk about the
technology, because there's been so little change on some of the
systems I'm looking after specifically over the years,
people are now crying out for that change and are mostly are
really happy to engage. But also it was actually a
challenge for me because I had to learn a new language to work
here. Even simple things like learning
about stage direction. So what's stage left, what's
stage right? What's upstage and downstage?
I've never worked on a stage before.
There's a lot of parallels with delivering projects, but in
terms of this environment I never worked in.
So what I tried to do was go out and shadow a few people in their
jobs as well. We're unusual in in the theatre
world in that we have our own broadcast facilities on site.
So just before Christmas we had a broadcast of Cinderella
Ballet. So I came along and was down in
the broadcast gallery and I was actually watching people
operationally, operationally that night, seeing how
everything connected together, who was doing what.
And it meant that when I went into meetings and started
discussing things with people, I had a better awareness of what
their day-to-day job was. And I think actually when you
show people that you're trying to learn about their world,
quite often that opens them up a bit and they feel like they're
being listened to, they are being listened to and are and
are happy to share, willing to share.
And most people, you know, are proud of their jobs and are
proud of the work they do, especially at the Opera House.
And I'm very happy to spend time with you, the small amount of
time that they've got describing things and explaining things.
So I was always keen to make sure that when I was in
meetings, I was learning about them rather than dictating to
them what was going to happen. And I was in a workshop with
some of the stage managers. And the, the stage managers are
the, are the people that sit just off to the side of the
stage during a show and actually directing everything that's
going on. And we did a workshop with some
of them. And one of them asked me, you
know, is it your intention to do XY and Z?
And I said, well, just picking up on the subtlety of your
question, it's not my intention to do anything to you.
We've been asked to implement some change.
I'm trying to understand from you guys what you need.
And this is not something that's meant to be forced upon you.
It's meant to make things better, easier, more reliable.
Try to list out some of the benefits there were.
What does he think makes for a successful project culture?
Maybe it's a bit of a dark art, but but ultimately trust's
really important. And to build trust, you do what
you say you're going to do and then people trust you.
So if you can demonstrate that people will be allowed to do
what they say they're going to do.
You have to allow people to make mistakes.
Everyone's human. So it's important when the
mistakes are made that there's a learning process and you you go
back and say, well, what went wrong?
How could we do things better? But I've always been very
fortunate in working for other project managers or programme
managers who've given me the freedom to go off and plan
things how I want. But I've always been available,
made themselves available for me to go back and ask questions and
advice without feeling like they're micromanaging me.
So it is a balance. I'm not claiming to have the
answers to how to do that, but I'm fortunate in that the most
successful project teams I've been part of have all got that
balance right between allowing people the freedom to go ahead
and not be micromanaged, while also having the support and the
trust to be able to come and ask questions or support when they
need it. Let's find out more about what
he's working on. Yeah.
So I'm replacing the production communication system here.
So that system is used for all of the teams on stage to
communicate. So whether that be the lighting
team, the sound team, the stage team who are moving scenery
around, the flies team who are looking after anything that's
raised up in the air, whether that be scenery or curtains or
performers. Even the older systems are
really creaking, showing their age and some of them were
beginning to fail. Even though people's radios were
still working, some of the infrastructure and some of the
the technology down in the engine rooms was becoming really
unreliable. So it's important to do a
general refresh and replace those systems.
I'm run a 3 year contract to run a whole number of renewals
projects and that was the first big one that was kind of the
burning platform we called it because it absolutely had to be
done urgently. So that was a significant
technical installation. So a lot of network, a lot of
signal processing communications equipment had to be installed.
But most importantly it was going to affect a huge number of
users who are on stage every day using this equipment.
And so actually one of my learning points, something that
didn't go particularly well was just getting all of those users
informed and engaged early enough.
We were going at it from a sort of a top down approach.
So the end users are, they could be stage teams, lighting
operatives, they could be people who are mixing the sound for the
show. They could be the costumes
department who are trying to get costumes to dressing rooms on
time. They could be the wigs, the make
up department. Because ultimately when the show
is ready to go on, everything needs to be in the right place
and happening at the right time. There's also the stage
management and the deputy stage management teams who are the
ones who are actually directing the show and are responsible for
the all the activities on stage. So they have a station just off
to one, one side of the stage and it's critical that they've
got everything they need at the touch of a button and can
communicate with everybody. Although it went live in end of
August 25, the project's not due to close until June this year.
26. We've still got some.
One of the benefits of the project was that we would not
just replace some ageing equipment, but also be able to
bring some other teams onto the system who'd not had comms
before. So we have a second theatre
here, it's called the Linbury Theatre.
Not everyone's aware that the Royal Opera House has a main
auditorium and then there's a smaller studio theatre, about
400 seats. They've always had a separate
Comm system, but by doing this upgrade there's some benefits
that we can realise by integrating them, bringing
everything on board and now people will be able to roam the
building and work in either theatre but be on the same Comm
system. I asked him if it mattered that
he wasn't an opera and ballet buff before he started working
here. It's important, I think, for
project managers to understand the nature of the projects
they're delivering, the environment they're delivering
them into. You don't necessarily have to be
an expert. Having an understanding is
important. I knew very little about what
before I started, and I sometimes wonder if that can be
a benefit because it can give you that detachment from just
being overwhelmed by everything you see because you're such a
fan of it and actually treat it in a much more objective way.
But I still get a buzz from coming into the building every
morning and walking into that auditorium that that listed
auditorium. Walking around the maze of
backstage corridors, rooms and huge open spaces, it's easy to
agree with Carl Erickson, who looks after the renewal project
for the stage Machineries, that it's a venue, not like any other
place. It's got an outrageous amount of
machinery in it. It's incredibly vital for it to
work. The schedule is just kind of
mental because, you know, you again, there's this series of
projects that needed to be done and the schedule to accomplish
those projects, you know, is incredibly difficult.
So you have to be really creative about how you approach
like these engineering problems. It's the things that primarily,
you know, move the scenery. Like do you know, the thing that
most people will see if they've ever been to a theatre show is,
you know, pieces of cloth flying out or flying in, you know,
during the scene change, you'll see stuff disappear above you or
fly in. That's the that's the most
common thing. And traditionally that stuff has
always been done sort of manually with people pulling
ropes. But there's been some machinery
assisted venues for quite a long time.
But really in the 90s is when that took off just because like
the technology became cheap enough and that you started to
see venues being purpose built with these, you know, fully
loaded with machines to do all of the scene changes.
And here it's really important. So there's a lot of things that
you use machinery for in the theatre.
I mean, often it's to reduce risk because when you have
people that need to move heavy loads, you know, that's its own
risk of having people do that work it.
I mean, it also enables a lot of more spectacular effects.
I mean, these days you have all sorts of, you know, heavier and
heavier things like LED walls. Those are very popular.
They're also very heavy. So, you know, if you want to
have some, again, some sort of spectacular transition in your
scene during a show, you need to have machinery to do that for
you. But here our schedule is, is
getting very unusual in the sense that we are a, an Opera
House and we do repertory. We do shows in repertory.
So that means we change what's on stage every day.
And partly that's just a factor of how opera has to work because
opera singers Can't Sing every day.
They have to take a rest day in between.
So like, as soon as you say we're going to do opera, you
automatically have to be a, a venue that that does a wrap.
So you have to change what's on stage, but then that also means
that you have to like, rehearse the things that are coming up.
So you have to figure out some sort of schedule of changing
what's on stage all the time. And the only way you can do that
in any sort of feasible sort of time frame is having a lot of
machinery that helps you move your scenery around.
We usually change over in the morning.
We do a, you know, from half 7:00 to 11:00, we do a rehearsal
from 11:00 to 2:00 and then they change over again from 2:00
till, you know, 630 and then they do a show that evening.
And that's most days of the year.
That's that's usually six days a week.
I asked Carl to explain the projects he's been working on.
So the two projects that I've done so far, the first one was
our stage elevators and the second one is the false
proscenium stage elevators are a lot easier to explain in the
sense that our stage is made-up of 6 elevators.
So they're sort of long rectangular elevators and
they're all next to each other going sort of from the
downstage, upstage stage elevators.
They they have like multiple facets of how they're used.
So it's not just like the, it's a moving floor and it's also got
like a mezzanine level underneath it.
So you can actually walk in on like at the level below, there's
a there's actually a level. And again, it's this part of the
elevator. So it travels up and down with
the elevator. And the reason why you have
something like that is because you often in a lot of shows, you
want to have some sort of effect where people come up from below.
You know, whether you have some sort of like, you know, lift
that pushes somebody up and through the floor or if you just
have a staircase, but you need to have some sort of, you know,
platform underneath that you can rise come up through.
So there's that level. But then that level is actually
very useful in the sense that like if you don't need it for an
effect during a show, you can actually store stuff in it.
And so the elevators can come all the way above stage.
So you can then wheel stuff inside of it and store stuff
inside of it and then, you know, put it down.
And then of course, they also drop down quite far.
So we use that particularly to great effect.
There's a lot of shows that rely on that action.
There's a lot of sets where they will build like a whole extra
level and then they'll drop the whole thing down so that there's
like a whole other level underneath that people can, you
know, have staircases come up and out of like in Traviata.
That's a very good example. The Act 1 of Traviata has
staircases and a bunch of people come up from below.
They're like curved staircases. And the only way you could do
that is by having the ability to put a massive, you know what
they call infill and lower it down.
So most of them go down 4 metres.
So that in itself is a pretty big drop.
But then the most upstage elevators, 5 and 6, go down even
further. They go down 5.7 metres and
that's used to really good effect in The Nutcracker to, you
know, one of the sort of effects in The Nutcracker that's
important to the telling the story is that essentially like
Clara, you know, the main girl in the, in the, in the story,
she kind of gets like shrunk to toy size, you know, because like
she gets given this Nutcracker for Christmas and then, you
know, whether it's a dream or not a dream is always, I think a
little bit up for interpretation.
But it's this idea that she gets shrunk down to toy size.
And then like the toy soldiers are now like her size or so
rather she's the size of them and then they're fighting rats,
you know, all this sort of stuff.
So things that would have to only happen with her shrinking
and the way that's usually communicated is this idea of
like the tree grows and most, you know, 99.9% of the theatres
around the world do not have like a, a big elevator that they
can drop. So usually they have some sort
of kind of cloth tree that folds.
So they just kind of like leave that.
And so it's a very like 1 dimensional tree.
And yes, you can do scene painting and make it look
interesting, but we actually get to have a physical tree, right?
We get to put on our elevator. So it's much more impressive
effects. I ask him what the biggest
challenge is that he faces working with the stage
elevators. So the biggest problem with the
stage elevators versus any of the other projects we're doing
is that a lot of the things that we do sort of are above you or
to the side. You know, it's like, OK, this is
out of the way. You can sort of work out, you
know, oh, you can put a scaffold up.
Oh, you can, you know. You can work at high or, you
know, you can sort of get access to a lot of these things and you
don't have to impede everybody everywhere.
The problem with the elevators is that, you know, they are the
floor of the theatre. So like if you're doing stuff
with it, nobody can be stood there.
Nobody can, you know, if you if you put them all down, that's a
giant hole. The biggest problem with doing
those was the fact that there was no way to not impact other
people. I really like them raid, you
know, risks, assumptions, issues, decisions.
I really like that a lot when you're, especially when you're
talking to like your stakeholders, 'cause the I mean,
the thing that you're really trying to do, you know, on a,
you know, as as frequent basis as you need to is, you know,
you're, you're always trying to solve issues, right?
You're always so you're always trying to mitigate risks.
Like you're always trying to look ahead and say like, OK,
well, there's a, there's an amount of planning where you're
going, OK, whatever our goals. Like I, my favourite part,
actually, I'd say my favourite part of doing this work is
actually talking to the people about what they want at the end.
So it was very fun for me to step in and start to look at how
they were using these things and going like, OK, well, that's not
a, you know, I could, I can see these pain points in your, in
your like operational processes. So like there's a list of things
that I would notice and then I would talk to them and say, you
know, what's good, what's bad? What would you like to change?
That's how this all starts. Like I don't just come in and
say like you should have X, you know, because like that's not
useful. Like I need to know what they
want to do. What's it like for him as an
engineer turned project manager to work on projects here?
It's the fact that I mean, this is, this is, I'm, I'm not just
like a project manager working in a field that's sort of like,
you know, to me, I, I can see that there's a lot of probably
project manager professionals that they're a project manager
has their career, you know, they will jump into this project,
that project, whatever, you know, and they're not going to
be very passionate, you know, about the project.
It's just OK, it's another project.
Like I know how to run a project.
I'll get this, you know, from start to finish, you know,
whereas I have the advantage that I'm managing projects in
the field that I have a lot of interest in.
So it's fun for me to think about the solutions, not just
execute the project. How does he personally measure
the success of the project he's worked on?
So the old system, you know, had lots of reoccurring faults, you
know, and constantly our sort of like support engineering team
would get called out all the time to, you know, sort of hit
it with a hammer and her power, you know, turn it off and on or
whatever they needed to do to get, you know, and this has
happened like almost on a daily basis.
And to me, the biggest measure of success is they never get
called. I mean, so again, reliability,
so that not having the engineers come every day is is to me, the
main measure that I see. But the important thing is that
it's everybody like even like throughout the building, like on
the technical, there was just this understanding that like try
to use the elevators as little as possible because they're not
reliable. And you know, that's now a
mindset that has they've been able to like throw away because
there's now shows. And again, I can't make spoilers
for what's coming up in future seasons in terms of like what
show it is and what they're going to do.
But there's people actually now planning to use the elevators
for live moves in shows again. What Karl is working on now is
what's called the false proscenium, which I discovered
is the frame separating the stage from the auditorium
through which the action of the ballet and opera scene.
In the Royal Opera House, you know, we have this very
decorative sort of carved golden proscenium.
And then but behind that is the thing that we call the false
proscenium. And so the false proscenium is
just black. It's just covered in black.
It's all flat and black on the front.
And very few theatres have anything that's like it.
It's, it's essentially, it's got some towers that can travel, you
know, on stage and off stage. And then it's got a lighting
bridge that can go up and down. So you can further control the
sort of the size of the aperture that people are looking at the
scene on stage. And and not only does it, you
know, sort of close that aperture, but it also the whole
thing can move upstage and downstage, which again, it's,
it's wild because it's huge. I mean, it's like 30 metres
wide. It weighs 50 tonnes.
It sits on 2 rails. You know, it's just, you don't
look at it go like, oh, that should move, you know, like, but
it does. So it's again the same problem,
reliability issues, you know, you had a 25 year old system and
just things didn't always want to work.
The original system was perfectly fine.
You know, it was of its era. Like I can't fault any of the
like the original design for how it emerged.
But you know, we have more interesting technology these
days, more interesting ways to operate stuff.
And again, it was easy to see the pain points.
It was easy to, you know, to, to watch the operators go like, you
know, hitting the reset button cause all the time, 'cause it
would just fall when you were trying to move it.
You know, so stuff like that is really obvious, Like, oh, this
is not in that's ideal state. So all of the stuff we have on
stage is from 25 years ago. It's from 1999.
After the false proscenium, Carl will turn his attention to
renewing the stage traps and sliders which allows performance
to pop up through the stage. The current ones, he says, have
been condemned. So it's time for the curtain to
come down on our behind the scenes look at just some of the
projects being managed at the Royal Ballet and Opera.
It's been a privilege to see the huge amount of usually unseen
effort that goes into putting on the productions here.
Mussoli is a dedicated team who continues on its journey of
greater professionalisation and it's fantastic to see people get
such a kick from doing their jobs.
I hope you've learned a few things that you can practise in
your own work, whether that's making change more of a success
or ensuring A moveable deadlines are met.
If you want to find out more about project management at
Royal Balloon Opera, look out for the Spring 2026 issue of
Project and listen to the APM podcast where I interviewed COO
Heather Walker about moving from Project Director to Executive
suite. Thanks again to Music, George,
Adam and Cole for joining us and to you for listening to the APM
Podcast. Don't forget to look out for
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