Summit Steel supplied all rigging, trussing, motors and draping for a massive gala dinner and Awards event in Athens for the annual European Sales Meeting of a leading US-based medical device company. The event involved the widest ground support structure--at 28m--that Summit has constructed to date. The evening was staged in the Olympic Tae-Kwon-Do stadium on the outskirts of the city, between Athens and the port of Piraeus, and was attended by 1,300 guests.
The ground-supported trussing grid was used for rigging all stage lighting, video, and audio equipment for the dinner and preceding presentation. The low structural weight loadings of the building ruled out flying, so a four-legged ground support system was used, which had to be very wide to ensure that the two downstage legs didn’t interfere with sightlines to the letter-box style set.
To achieve the adequate strength across this span, Summit used approximately 75m of its largest 52x76cm Thomas SuperTruss. Summit also erected eight trussing goal-posts around the upper level (on the balcony), running around the building, to provide table lighting positions
The entire auditorium was draped all the way around the building in black serge cloth to cover the retractable seating and to improve the acoustics; the complete task consuming about 250m of soft goods.
Summit’s team of four was led by Jon Bray and took five days to complete the load-in and build period. They also rigged and flew a series of 10 different lightweight trussing shapes out over the auditorium and seating area for additional audience lighting. Quarter ton CM Prostar motors were used throughout to keep the weight expedient.
Nicola Scotchmer, of UK-based Jigzaw, produced the event with production manger Chris Venn, lighting designer Pete Edwards, sound designer Dick Sinclair, video designer Oliver Phipps, and scenic designer Andrew Gordon from Upstage.