Anthony Banks, operations manager for Gearhouse Rigging was head rigger for the tour, which played a mix of indoor and outdoor venues.
In Cape Town they used an 18m wide by 12m deep TFL roof. The PA Towers were done with Layher scaffolding, while the Durban gig was staged on a 20m wide by 14m deep Stageco roof with integral PA wings. The PA wings were at a height of 25m metres. The Johannesburg shows which concluded the tour took place in the Dome, a 13 212 seated capacity venue which sold out for two nights.
The GHSA lighting department was led by Rob Baker, a regular freelancer for the Cape Town branch, who worked with 4 touring crew and 2 lighting crew from the local branches.
They matched the plot sent by Richie's LD Joel Young. This consisted of three 54ft long straight trusses, each loaded with seven bars of 6 PARs and following a clean, classical theatrical style with a blacked out stage, a basic PAR wash and moving light 'specials' layered over the top and used for colour and movement.
There were 12 Martin Professional MAC 2K Washes on the upstage truss and nine on the mid truss, along with 14 Selecon Pacific Zoom Profiles distributed between front and back trusses for band specials and key lighting. The front truss also contained 8-lite Molefays for audience illumination - a vital element for any Richie show which features plenty of audience interaction.
The upstage black scrim was lit with 20 Robe ColorWash 700E ATs, and another 10 MAC 2K profiles on the floor were used for hard edged aerial beam effects. Young operated the show using a Hog iPC console running in Hog II mode, and they also utilised 3 Supertrouper follow spots.
Gearhouse Audio's team was led by Revil Baselga. The L-Acoustics VDOSC rig varied in size, with Newlands in Cape Town being the largest venue for which they used 48 VDOSC elements, 15 a side for the main hangs with two outer hangs of 10 a side plus three delays, two of dVDOSC and one of Kudo.
(Jim Evans)
