Appearances can be deceptive. To the first time visitor, Tromsø, 300 km inside the Arctic Circle, is a small northern European city like many others. Then you discover its many claims to fame - not satisfied with having the world's most northerly university, Tromsø boasts its most northerly cathedral and brewery as well. And it recently became home to the first new theatre to be built in Norway for over 10 years.

The Hålogaland Teater company has been waiting for a permanent home for over 35 years and the building, inaugurated in November 2005 by Her Majesty the Queen of Norway, was certainly worth the wait. With two main theatres plus a café theatre, rehearsal room, large workshops, bright and modern dressing rooms and spacious public areas, the company finally has everything it ever dreamt of.

The first professional company in the north of Norway, the small group of pioneers who formed Hålogaland Teater in 1971 received an unenthusiastic response until they started performing in the region's local dialect. Today, the majority of productions are still performed in dialect and the company has an estimated core audience of around 6,500 people, roughly 10% of the city's population. In addition to the 200 or so productions it hopes to put on this year in its permanent home, Hålogaland Teater also aims to mount a further 100 performances on tour.

Such an ambitious schedule enables the company to offer audiences a wide choice: in the first three months of 2006, the programme included a translation of Lope de Vega's The Dog in the Manger, a production of children's author Astrid Lindgren's Mio, my Mio, an international film festival and a collaboration with visiting modern dance group Katrine Bølstad Kompani. They also put on tried and trusted shows, such as Fiddler on the Roof and, of course, Ibsen.

The two main auditoria are Scene Vest with 330 seats and Scene Ost, 130 seats. Both are as future proof as possible, because, as Jon Paulsen, Technical Director of Hålogaland Teater, said: "This building will be here for 100 years - we wanted to make sure that technically it would continue to serve the community for as long as possible." Geir Sire of Bright AS, the distributor for ETC equipment in Norway, wanted the theatre then to have the best system possible, saying: "The original brief called for two star network, but I've worked with a layout like that, one of the biggest in Norway, where every stage had its own star system, and it was just too complicated. So I thought about and designed the system that I would like to work with."

Geir's network is simplicity itself and future proof too. Although each auditorium has its own network, Geir has designed them so that the two networks can merge into one, should the need arise. Apart from giving the theatre greater flexibility, it also enables a router to be used to send all fault reports to one computer.

Both networks are 50/50 ETCNet2 and DMX, with the option to swap the DMX channels over to Ethernet if required, by changing the plug from XLR to Ethercon. With Cat5e cabling throughout, the future versatility of the rigs is ensured. The network extends beyond the auditoria and control rooms to include, for example, the lighting design studio, which has WYSIWYG installed, so resident lighting designer, Nils Haagenrud, can pre-programme lighting plots in peace and quiet (while taking inspiration from a wonderful view over the fjord!).

Dimming is ETC Sensor+ Advanced Feature dimmer racks, each with a CEM+ control module. These control modules, together with two ETCNet2 DMX Four Port Nodes, provide total control and integration of the system. All connections from both stages go directly to a patch, and all the hardware - dimmers and control - go directly to the same patch, so if additional channels or more DMX universes, for example, are needed in either auditorium, they can be simply patched through. Says Geir: "Everything is in one place and easily accessible. It is a very sophisticated system, yet incredibly easy for the staff here to run and program. All the cabling on the network rack, for example, is colour coded, blue denoting DMX, red is Net2, green is video and grey cable for the PCs."

The next part of the system to be installed will be ETC's sophisticated DimSTAT reporting software, which will enable a wide range of functions - from remote set-up to diagnostic logs - to be accessed from a computer. It also provides bi-directional communication with all connected dimmers, with a simple icon-based display or spreadsheet-style list on the computer showing each dimmer that is connected and activated. Interrogation using database "find" procedures can quickly locate a specific dimmer by circuit number or text description. For multi-installation venues such as Hålogaland Teater, which has independent spaces, zones can be easily allocated.

The network is one which many theatres would be envious of, particularly as Hålogaland Teater was among the first to take delivery of ETC's new Congo control console. In fact, it has five of them! Nils Haagenrud explains: "We have one Congo for each of the two auditoria, one for touring and the other two consoles provide the back up facilities. With a lighting inventory that consists of PAR cans, 24 of which are ETC Source Four PARs, a range of profiles, including 65 ETC Source Four Zooms and 48 Source Four juniors, fresnels, floods and moving heads, we needed a console that could look after everything. With Congo it is easy to be a lighting designer - it's a good theatre desk with powerful features and very logical."

In addition to the two auditoria, Hålogaland Teater also has the facility to put on small, café-style productions in the foyer, where simple technical facilities are available. Here the lighting is rigged on distributed dimming in the form of ETC SmartBars, of which the theatre has ten. The company already had six SmartBars, finding them ideal for touring - compact, lightweight and discreet, no matter what the venue - and added the rest when the building was completed. The flexibility of the SmartBars enables the small foyer productions to have as much or as little lighting as necessary, with the bar sitting neatly in the truss high in the foyer's ceiling. Control here is either from the ETC Unison ER Series architectural control rack, which controls all the theatre's house lights, or an ETC SmartFade desk, of which the theatre has two. Bright AS has also supplied two ETC SmartPack touring dimmer racks, which again can be used for this café area, on tour or in the rehearsal room.

This new theatre is enabling the Hålogaland Teater company to widen its repertoire and broaden its appeal, so gaining a bigger audience. Said Jon Paulsen: "Now we have a permanent home and an identity, it is our intention to be a cultural lighthouse for this region. But we also want to gain recognition as a national theatre, to have reviews in the Oslo papers as well as here in the north." The infrastructure that is Hålogaland Teater will serve them well in their ambition.

Meanwhile, Bright, which was formed just five years ago and which focuses mainly on the professional entertainment and TV industry, has just been awarded the contract to supply and install replacement dimmers for the main stage at Det Norske Teatret in Oslo. Replacing the existing Grossman dimmer system will be 11 ESR48 Sensor+ Advanced Racks providing 558 3kW channels, 96 5kW channels and 38 12kW channels. The installation will also include a Unison system for house lights, work lights and other features. Existing panels and light switches will be replaced with Unison panels and two Unison LCD panels for the lighting control room and stage manager's booth. Bright will also be supplying four ETC IES Matrix MkII 24 dimmer touring racks with SineWave modules.

Geir Sire, who will be in control of the installation, delights in telling a story of the company's first installation of Sensor dimming at the theatre. Two racks were installed two years ago for the rehearsal room, now used for performance. So successful was the installation that several technicians, when they were made aware of the change over, said: "So that's why it all works properly now!"  There could be no better testimonial.