Elden is the largest historical outdoor theatre production in Norway, and it has been staged every summer since 1994. Its setting is unusual by any measure. The performance takes place on the slag heaps above Røros, the old copper-mining town in central Norway inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, with the industrial landscape itself forming the set. Around 400 volunteers take part each season.
The story is a local one: the winter of 1718-19, when General Armfeldt’s Swedish army marched on Trondheim and was destroyed by the cold on the retreat. This year’s run, from 22 July to 1 August, drew between 11,000 and 12,000 spectators. Technical delivery is handled by rental company Pro Systemer AS, which deployed Outline P12 coaxial loudspeakers as stage wedges at key positions across the arena.
The P12 arrived at Elden at the end of a long search, against a precise brief. Frode Trondahl, Project Manager at Pro Systemer AS, explained: “We have been looking for a new 12-inch coaxial wedge monitor for some time, to replace our existing monitors. They needed to be lighter, to sound at least as good as what we already had, to offer flexibility in terms of rigging and setup, and to provide better protection for outdoor use in rainy conditions – IP54 – than our current monitors. We tested a wide range of different wedges, and of all the models we evaluated, the voicing of the P12 was the closest match to our existing monitors. At the same time, the P12 offered a little more low-end, giving the impression of a slightly larger and more substantial sound. We see this as a definite advantage.”
Trondahl added: “We handle more than 1,000 projects every year – theatre, revue shows, concerts, festivals, sporting events and corporate events. That requires an inventory which is both highly flexible and exceptionally reliable. So far, we have had nothing but positive experiences with the P12.”
On site, the first difference showed up as headroom. Fredrik Hagland, Sound Designer for Elden at Medhør AS, reported: “The new Outline P12 wedges delivered better gain before feedback than the ones we deployed the previous year. We didn’t notice how loud we were running them until we went through actor monitoring one day without the PA, and realised the actors’ omni headsets were playing back at rock-concert levels without any issue.”
Ten consecutive nights on an exposed mountain site tested the rest of the specification. “The Outline P12 wedges generally performed well and stood up to the harsh conditions that outdoor theatre in Norway is,” Hagland added. “They delivered the same monitoring even when there was rain straight into them.”
The P12 belongs to Outline’s P-Series, a range of portable point-source systems built exclusively around coaxial transducers, spanning models from a single 4-inch to a double 15-inch configuration.
