Seabrooke Theatre @ DHS

The Seabrooke Theatre is a 100-seater auditorium used by the School’s Dramatic Arts Department as well as by amateur and professional companies and groups.

In 2007, Durban High School Old Boy and theatre lover, Christopher Seabrooke, funded the conversion of the DHS Chapel into Seabrooke’s Theatre, which quickly became a popular venue for many local productions in the city. In 2020, thanks to another generous contribution from Mr Seabrooke, a much-needed renovation and equipment upgrade was made possible and commenced at the start of the Covid-19 South African lockdown. The theatre has been repainted, seats reupholstered, a green room/dressing room has been built, and on the technical side, a state of the art lighting and audio system has been installed.

Seabrooke’s is an intimate theatre, which lends itself to being the perfect venue for drama productions, motivational talks, presentations or comedy evenings. The recent upgrade ensures that the Theatre will cope with the many demands that modern stage productions require. All the lighting fixtures are LED and the sound system is small, robust and deceptively powerful for its size. These considerations will go a long way to keeping the doors of the theatre open when our energy crisis raises its head again as the lighting and sound equipment are not power hungry so electricity costs can be kept very low.

The lighting rig was designed with complete flexibility in mind. Long runs of shows are a thing of the past so moving a new show into a venue is all about how quickly it can be done, allowing the opening of the show to be fast tracked. A versatile lighting rig goes a long way to shaving off hours of unnecessary repositioning and refocusing of lighting fixtures for every new production.

For the technically minded, the lighting rig comprises of 6 Robe RGBW (Red, Green, Blue, White) moving head washes and 13 Robe RGBW Static Colour changing Led units, all 19 of these units have a 3.8 to 60 degree Zoom facility which makes them extremely flexible. Added to these fixtures are 4 x ETC 25 to 50 degree Colorsource Spots which have been included for the all too familiar request for gobo breakups, either from the FOH position or from the back lighting bar. The control system is the ever popular MA DOT2 OnPC platform which makes for fast and powerful programming opportunities. There is also a Le Maitre MVS Hazer for atmospheric effects.