When Taieri Musical staged Jesus Christ Superstar at Dunedin’s Regent Theatre, it wasn’t just the award-winning cast and crew who delivered a showstopper. Behind the scenes, a full JBL Professional sound system powered the rock opera with clarity, impact and energy fit for one of New Zealand’s grandest stages.
The Regent Theatre, with its ornate baroque-revival interior and 1600 seats is a landmark in its own right. But for sound engineers, its scale and architecture present a serious challenge. How do you make sure every audience member from the front row to the circle under the balcony, hears every word and every note with the same intensity?
That task fell to the team from Strawberry who supplied the sound equipment, with system engineering led by Dave Bennet. “In a theatre like the Regent the challenge is covering all the seats while staying out of the sightlines,” Bennet explains. “You can’t just hang giant speaker arrays in front of the stage and those beautiful views. Instead we used a mix of flown and ground-stacked arrays, discreet under-balcony fills and a few spot fills for the tricky areas.”
The main left and right arrays consisted of three VTX B18 subs with four VTX A8s per side, ground-stacked neatly beneath the proscenium to avoid sightline issues. Additional hangs of four VTX A8s per side covered the circle, while a centre cluster of eight Vertec VT4886s was dedicated to vocals.
Six AC25s provided under-balcony vocal coverage, suspended discreetly from the circle’s front lighting rail, while SRX712s were called in for difficult pockets of coverage and as stage foldback. Everything ran from Crown I-Tech 4×3500 amplifiers, with JBL Performance Manager providing system control and tuning.
“Sound design for a rock musical like Jesus Christ Superstar comes with many challenges and trade-offs, but the JBL range makes it elegant.”
“Right from the outset we knew we had to use a distributed system. The VTX A8’s consistent acoustic performance across its 110-degree horizontal coverage helps a lot when you’re pushed into the corners and planning the fills in advance was key,” Bennet continues. “We had four different generations of loudspeakers managed under one platform showing how handy Performance Manager is. It’s been a great tool for deployment, tuning and monitoring.”
Sound designer and mixer Tom Acklin of Crossfade shaped the production’s audio night after night, balancing the rock band with the vocals that drive the story forward. For him, the JBL rig brought both power and finesse.
“Sound design for a rock musical like Jesus Christ Superstar comes with many challenges and trade-offs, but the JBL range makes it elegant,” Acklin says. “The VTX A8 handling the band content is the heart of the system. It ticks many boxes for me as a sound designer, full-range frequency response down to 60Hz, compact size to avoid those sightline issues and a wide 110-degree dispersion that’s perfect for this venue.”
“The JBL VTX A8 is an excellent choice for a musical show that needs big energy in a compact package.”
Acklin emphasises the mix of cabinets as a strength, ensuring every seat receives the same experience. “The VT4886 centre hang carries the vocals, if you’re under the balcony the AC25s are the real star. It’s all about making sure the story reaches everyone, no matter where they’re sitting.”
For a production as bold and timeless as Jesus Christ Superstar, sound is as central to the experience as the staging or choreography. Both Bennet and Acklin agree the Regent Theatre production demonstrated how well the JBL VTX A Series adapts to challenging live theatre environments.
“The key takeaway is that the A8s are at home in this kind of deployment,” Bennet concludes. “From their wide coverage to their impressive low-end output even in small numbers, they’re an excellent choice for a musical show that needs big energy in a compact package.”
