Once a year, the market town of Hay on Wye is transformed into one of the world's biggest book festivals, descended upon by book lovers, writers, comedians and musicians. The 10 day festival is an essential fixture in the cultural calendar.
Stage Electrics has been supplying all lighting, staging, sound equipment, rigging and mains distribution for the festival site since 2002, bringing to life the performances and talks by some of the world's leading writers and personalities. The festival management itself presents a variety of challenges including changeable British weather, and the test of producing sound clarity within the outdoor venues that benefits the guest speakers and audience.
Stage Electrics provide the technical equipment and live event management for four main venues at the festival, which form a tented village. In the Barclays Wealth Pavilion, Hay's main venue seating 1,300, an L'Acoustics' Kiva Curve Linear Array was supplied with astounding results. Sound Designer Paul Turner specified the L'Acoustics' Kiva system due to its formidable reputation for fantastic speech reproduction - particularly useful in a marquee. In the Guardian Stage, the festivals second largest venue, a DiGiCo SD8 digital sound desk was supplied to provide the audio quality necessary to support a combination of musical performances, interviews and discussions.