Melbourne’s State Theatre Fly System Upgrade

State Theatre Curtain comes down to make way for the theatre’s flying system upgrade.

After 40 years, and thousands of productions, the ageing fly system in the ever popular State Theatre at Arts Centre Melbourne is currently being replaced. As a result of the theatre’s closure through the pandemic restriction, the scheduled six-month replacement project was able to be brought forward from its original September start.

Key milestones for the project included the safe removal of the treasured State Theatre curtain to make way for the fly-tower works, and a six-hour live link to the Waagner Biro testing facility in Austria involving representatives from Arts Centre Melbourne and the Theatre Planner Schuler Shook to enable safety and operational tests of the new equipment. With 15 people across the world connected online simultaneously it truly was a great collaborative effort.

In August we commenced demolishing the old flying system, with an almost ceremonial cutting of the cables on the old flying system.

Work begins on Arts Centre Melbourne’s State Theatre Fly system replacement 2020 (Credit: Mark Gambino)