Amateur theatre in Ealing, West London. Built in 1964.
Official website: http://questors.org.uk/
Equipment
1971 (from The Stage Guide)
Electrics: Strand LC board in FOH control. Dimmers – 72 (46 x 1kW, 26 x 2kW); 2 presets; 3 groups. Circuits – FOH 38; Flies 27; Stage dips 7. Socket type – 15A BESA. Total capacity available – 300A on 3 phases.
Sound: Console in FOH control room. 3 amplifiers x 30W. 2 tape decks. 1 turntable. No mic sockets. 3 loudspeakers (and 7 sockets).
From Tech-Ops website, by Chris Pocock:
Our Scouts used the old Questors Theatre in Ealing for our annual Scout Shows from WW2 to the time the new Questors was built. At that time the Questors Theatre was a corrugated iron ex Catholic Chapel.
In my teens (mid 1950s) I got involved with the lighting. There were half a dozens dimmers which were made from clay sewerage pipes containing brine sunk vertically into the ground. There was a fixed electrode in the base and another electrode dangling from a length of picture cord which passed over a quadrant with an attached lever. Operating the lever would lower the upper electrode into the brine and thus fade up the lights as it approached the electrode at the base.
If you overloaded the circuit the brine was likely to boil. Another problem was that if the level of the brine was a bit low, a fast fade up was likely to result in wet knees as there was no protection whatever.
The lighting ‘board’ was in the wings so it is surprising that with so many Cubs and Scouts milling about and rushing off stage that we never lost any of them!
