But what Rotorua Lakes Council considered “teething problems” with the venue’s sound system on opening night continued and the second gala night was called off shortly after doors were due to open.
At the time, it released a statement that said ticketholders would be refunded and options to try to carry on had been exhausted, leaving staff and performers “devastated”.
Council culture heritage and mahi toi manager Stewart Brown wrote a report on the incident for tomorrow’smeeting.
In it, he said the purpose of the opening show was to “showcase the facility’s capabilities and local artists across a range of genres”.
But there were technical difficulties with the sound during the first night of the gala.
“These were considered to be teething problems as a result of some artists not being available for rehearsals.
“This made the first night quite challenging to deliver to the standard that [centre] staff aspire to.”
He said efforts were made during the next day to resolve the issues and claimed that artists were “pressuring” the centre’s technical team to “work with their own sound technician to make their own changes to mitigate some of the previous night’s issues”.
The system was configured to give the artists’ sound technician remote access to allow him to “tweak” settings.
The remote configuration was untested as staff had not expected to need to use it for the show, Brown said.
The change caused two audio devices on the network to create a “broadcast storm” of continuously looping data. This built up over time and led to all connected devices failing.
It took time for the system failure to begin, however, so the fault was not immediately linked back to the reconfiguration.
At the same time, the centre’s technical team were informed the council network was down and they noticed council IT staff making a change in the patch room.
“This led the team down a different route to troubleshoot the problem than if they had known the issue had stemmed from the [centre] networks,” Brown’s report said.
“This left only 60 minutes until the scheduled show start time. The technical team worked against the clock to transition to an analogue set-up to deliver the show, however there was not sufficient time available to complete the work and necessary testing required to confidently deliver the performance.”
The issues were escalated to council community wellbeing deputy chief executive Anaru Pewhairangi and, after meeting with people on site, the cancellation decision was made and communicated to the mayor, performers, audience members, and the general public.
The team worked into the night to get the theatres ready for the whānau open day the next day, and Brown said there were no further incidents.
His report said other factors that contributed to the failures included delays in equipment arriving, claims that team members were being “pressured and distracted by the visiting sound engineer and artists” while trying to problem-solve, key staff being tired after working 11-16 hour days in the lead-up to the reopening, and poor manufacturer’s documentation for sound equipment.
Communication issues were also identified in the investigation by the council’s IT and centre teams.
Brown said the teams had already improved their “communication culture” and understanding of each other’s requirements.
Job training, network access changes and documentation improvements would also help avoid future issues.
The centre had 24 shows, conferences and other events booked over the next two months.
- Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ on Air
