UK - What colour is the voice of a deity? This was the synesthetic question faced by the design team at London's National Theatre in their production of Everyman, a new adaptation of the classic 15th Century morality play.

This isn't your medieval ancestors' staging of Everyman. Carol Ann Duffy's adaptation recasts the play as a critique of the prodigal present, as a modern Everyman (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is forced to confront his solipsism, materialism and wasteful ways in the face of imminent death. The National's production, directed by Rufus Norris with lighting design by Paul Anderson, set design by Ian MacNeil, video design by Tal Rosner and sound design by Paul Arditti, uses a synthesis of up to the moment technology to present its new interpretation.

At the beginning of the play, God - who takes the form of a cleaning woman - becomes fed up with the self cent

South Africa - A truly spectacular 'rose window' made up of 89 x Robe LED moving lights - was revealed during the new South African production of Sister Act at the Joburg Theatre, downtown Johannesburg

Production designer Declan Randall united all visual elements - lighting, video and set - in a colourful collage of finesse and visual imagineering to match the pace and vibrancy of the show. With a cast featuring some of the best South African musical theatre talent, directed by award winning Janice Honeyman and produced by Bernard Jay, it received rave reviews and sold-out audiences.

Declan - a South African now living in the UK - lit Starlight Express a couple of years ago at the same venue for the same production team, who loved his work and asked him back to add his magic to Sister Act.

He began working on ideas seven months before the show opened, ba

Italy - Giovanni Pinna has worked with Vasco since 1991. What is the secret of this alliance? "Vasco believes in people's ideas. Moreover, all the technical and creative workers who have been around him for years, from the stage design team (Gio Forma Studio Associato since 1998) to the stage director Diego Spagnoli, play an active role in the whole show preparation process.

"First of all we begin by working around various set design ideas. Then everyone says which one they prefer. This year, the choice was unanimous: a large covered stage, modelled on the keel of a ship. This is when you start processing the ideas yourself, while the activity of discussing and sharing the project goes on as it develops over six months. It takes a long time, but that is what it needs for a set of this size.

"You have to realize you are in a stadium, with an audience of 60 or 70,

USA - Rock and roll never dies; neither do rock and roll dreams, although sometimes they may take an extended hiatus while "adult responsibilities" are looked after. Such was the case for New York attorney Charles Bonfante. In the '80s and early '90s, the Long Island native was the drummer for a number of touring rock bands. Then adulthood happened; so did law school, followed by a successful career as an attorney. Now Bonfante has travelled full circle, forming a band and reliving his rock road warrior experience with help from something that wasn't available back in the day: a collection of high-output lighting fixtures (primarily LEDs) from Chauvet Professional.

Bonfante's group, Reservoir Dogs, is a Pink tribute band that has been wowing audiences with a dynamic lighting rig consisting of 32 Rogues and a variety of other Chauvet Professional fixtures supplied by Th

Canada - CAST Software has announced wysiwyg Student Edition lighting design and previsualization software for students and educational & training institutions. The new edition will "better prepare students for their future careers in live lighting, laser and video event design".

All the student's investment on the student edition licence, goes towards a wysiwyg six or 12-month lease or full professional version.

A newly added Perform Lease Student Edition enables students to programme lighting using up to 1,000 DMX channels including connection with media server or compatible offline editor, via protocols such as DMX, EDMX, Art-net, sACN, CITP, Motion Control Universes, Pangolin Laser System, Sollinger Laser Animation, Strand ShowNet or SandNet.

wysiwyg version R35 was recently upgraded to include unrivalled performance and functionality. Constantly evolving, wysi

Denmark - The RUSH MH 6 Wash, the newest moving head in the RUSH by Martin series, is available for pre-order and expected to ship late September.

The RUSH MH 6 Wash is adapted from the popular RUSH PAR 2 RGBW Zoom and utilizes the same LED engine and zoom system, while also featuring moving head capability. The RUSH MH 6 Wash offers a fully pre-mixed color system from 12 10 W RGBW LEDs with a spectacular 10°-60° zoom. It also features full electronic dimming, strobe effects and temperature-controlled fan cooling for quiet operation.

"After hosting a private preview event at this year's Prolight&Sound in Frankfurt I am confident in saying that the RUSH MH 6 Wash will be the ideal workhorse for night venues and small to medium events," said Mark Buss, product manager, RUSH by Martin. "With proven LED technology used within the RUSH Par 2 Zoom RGBW and the

USA - When lighting designer Steve Comer began working with Jackson Browne in 2008, the goal was to create a 100 percent LED system, and with the help of Bandit Lites, that goal is coming closer and closer to fruition.

Comer tackled the project with production designer Dennis Scrimo and chose a design that would be flexible enough for a 2000 seat theatre and a 10000 seat amphitheatre in addition to being cost effective, efficient on space, and load in and out times.

"I have smaller profile fixtures so they can mostly fit inside Bandit's Go-Go Truss, which has cut down time considerably in hanging fixtures or needed to have cases of fixtures in a truck or on a stage," explained Comer. "Once we decided on an idea we liked, I got with Dizzy Gosnell and we talked about how to streamline some things to make it work. The design has gone through a couple of modificatio

Czech Republic - The Vivaldianno Project - a sumptuous and ambitious combination of popular classics played in a classical rock style - is a successful crossover musical concept evolved by Italian violin virtuoso Jaroslav Sveceny and Czech rock keyboardist Michal Dvorak.

The latest touring version of the show played five large arenas in the Czech and Slovak Republics with a full Robe moving light rig supplied by rental company Q-99 from Slovakia.

The largest venue was Prague's 17,000 capacity O2. The concerts were so popular that extra shows were added in both Ostrava and Brno which immediately sold out. Lighting was designed by Martin Hruska.

The Robe fixture count included BMFL Spots and BMFL Blades, LEDBeam 1000s, CycFX 8s and 4s, Pointes and LEDWash 1200s - a combination that gave Martin the chance to create all the drama and intensity expected from the genres of rock an

UK - Long days in the sun and surf, long nights lost in music. That's the promise of Boardmaster, Europe's leading celebration of all that is surfing. Grown from small beginnings in 1981, Boardmasters has become the epitome of boutique festival going, an event packed day and night with a feast for all the senses; not least visuals. "We're doing something quite different at the Unleashed stage in the Big Top this year", said Rhodri Shaw of Video Design. "That's as well as provide the big IMAG screens for the main stage."

Shaw, as project manager for Video Design, has been instrumental in driving the development of LED at Boardmasters and it's not as straight forward as it sounds. "The Unleashed stage is a saturation situation with pumping music from the likes of Groove Armada and Roni Size. The designers asked that we provide great arches skinned with LED

China - When the 24th PALM Beijing Show was reinstated, after originally being cancelled, PR Lighting took every opportunity to capitalise.

On their large 252sq.m stand at the China International Exhibition Centre the company presented no fewer than eight new products, and was rewarded by picking up several 'Best in Show' awards.

The XR 470 Beam won the first prize and three further PR Lighting products - XLED 3019, XR 1000 Spot and XR 130 Beam - took runner-up awards in the 24th PALM Expo Exhibitions Products Technology Progress category. In addition, PR Lighting walked away with the Exhibition's Intellectual Property Award.

According to international sales director, Ernie Armas, response to the new products from the market was equally positive. "The lighting professionals, specifiers and consultants who visited our booth were extremely bullish about all our new produc

Europe / USA - Utilizing a proprietary Philips technology, Philips Selecon has introduced the PL Series Mark II LED luminaires.

"As we listened to our dealers and clients worldwide, we found that what they desired most in LED luminaires was colour consistency," said Julie Smith, Philips Strand Lighting general manager of the Americas. "Working with our engineers at Philips, we have found a fantastic solution with the PL Series Mark II LED luminaires and we are very excited to introduce them into the market."

The PLPROFILE1 MKII LED luminaire is a variable beam profile with precise beam control and pattern projection from a high output beam using only 140 Watts. An innovative combination of LED source technology and precision optical design, the PLPROFILE1 MKII is available in 18-34 or 24-44 degree beam angles while offering the performance of a 500 Watt pro

Spain - The latest addition to Ibiza Town's extensive nightlife platter is a club cum restaurant named Heart, perched idyllically at the foot of the Marina next to the Ibiza Grand Hotel. The club, which provides guests with a three-pronged experience of food, dance and musical performances and DJs, is the brainchild of Albert and Ferran Adrià - the world-famous chefs renowned for their Michelin three-star restaurant elBulli - and Guy Laliberté, founder of Cirque du Soleil.

Belgian-based Arf & Yes were responsible for coming up with a lighting concept for the main part of the experience, and called upon the services of 112 Rogue R1 Washes supplied by Spanish distributor Stonex Show Lighting.

"The concept is nothing like a normal club," commented Ignace D'Haese, one half of Arf & Yes. He continued: "It's more like a Vegas show in a way, with many evolving

Slovenia - Leading Slovenian lighting designer Crt Birsa was asked to create a dynamic production lighting scheme for the main stage at the 2015 Schengenfest event, Slovenia's largest festival, staged at Vinica, Bela Krajina and attracting up to 10,000 music fans each day. They enjoyed a series of rousing performances from a selection of top international artists and local heroes including Rudimental (DJ set), Asian Dub Foundation, Magnifico, Siddharta Stahlzeit and Guano Apes.

Crt chose to use close to 80 x Robe moving lights which were mostly supplied by rental company Intralite. This included 20 x Pointes, 16 x Robin 600E Beams, 20 x ColorSpot 1200E ATs, 20 x ColorWash 575E AT Zooms and three ColorSpot 700 E ATs all right at the centre of the design, which also utilised a number of other lights.

Crt and programmer / operator Nikola Podlesnik worked closely on creating a ran

UK - Quick fire comedian Lee Mack is back on prime time screens with a new series of the popular fact finding panel show, Duck Quacks Don't Echo. Filmed live in front of a studio audience, lighting director Oli Richards is taking care of the lighting installation, with assistance from crew chief David 'Frankie' Francis.

Set designer Markus Blee has created the backdrop to the show using an array of pictorial acrylic blocks arranged to form a cascading effect. Aurora worked closely with the designer to populate the boxes with hundreds of metres of LED ribbon, adding colour and depth to the set pieces.

Elsewhere, to wash the set Aurora supplied Martin MAC Auras augmented with a selection of Viper Performances that add versatility with their framing and focusing capabilities. Martin Rush Pars are also included in the installation to keep the audience illuminated during ca

Germany - The Airbeat-One festival happens annually since 2002 on the private airfield of Neustadt-Glewe in North Germany and is held by the rental company Music-Eggert. There are several floors where a lot of EDM fans can listen to several styles of their favourite music.

The Main Floor this year alone was equipped with the following material: 108 x Clay Paky Mythos, 28 x Clay Paky B-EYE K20, 20 x Clay Paky B-EYE K10, 16 x Alpha Spot HPE 1500, 66 x Laser Imagineering Sunbeam 100 4C Zoom, 34 x Laser Imagineering CLED 1000, one grandMA2 full-size, two grandMA2 light, with lighting design from Sebastian Heise.

Heise, who is also CEO of Laser Imagineering, explained, "The base design idea of the different dance floors is to get an impressive feeling to all festival guests. The lighting fixtures themselves should be part of the decoration and shall not dominate the total opti

Sweden - Wireless Solution hosted three very successful training days in Marstrand, Sweden. From the 25-27 August the Wireless DMX team introduced the new G5 software to 23 distributors of 13 different nationalities in this picturesque Swedish west-coast city.

W-DMX introduced innovative new features in the new G5 software, including Triple-Band communication, Wi-Fi, improved Adaptive Hopping with four times increased resolution and many other great components soon to be released.

The team also introduced a redesigned product line: a sleek MicroBox, IP66 rated WhiteBox, new ProBox, BlueBox and completely reshaped UglyBox. "It was very important to present these new products to our loyal distributors first," said Niclas Arvidsson, CEO of Wireless Solutions. "We have got the most unique software on the market, and the best product range created to date. The new im

Denmark - Martin Professional has announced the RUSH FiberSource 1 is now shipping. As the latest addition to the RUSH by Martin line of affordable lighting solutions, the RUSH FiberSource 1 is a powerful tool for illuminating fibre optic cables in permanent installations.

With a new 78 W LED fiber projector, the RUSH FiberSource 1 can light up to 300 1 mm fibre optic cables and boasts improved efficiency and reliability. The luminaire features a colour wheel with nine interchangeable colours, a twinkle wheel for variable-speed sparkling effects, and smooth, full-range (0-100 percent) electronic dimming.The fixture is fully controllable via DMX (up to five channels) as well as a stand-alone mode that ensures any combination of colours, colour speed and twinkle speed can be easily programmed.

"LED technology is evolving and is now also taking over traditional fibre applica

Germany - The new Flashback 4 (FB-4) network interface from Pangolin Systems is now available in a professional and durable aluminium housing. Ray Technologies (RTI), a Laserworld company, manufactures the new interface at its premises near Munich, Germany.

The Pangolin FB-4 is a new interface providing Network laser show control options for Pangolin software products. It is designed for high performance application. Several FB-4 interfaces can be connected with normal network switches.

The RTI FB-4 is available for Pangolin Quickshow or for Pangolin BEYOND, and it is available in different configurations, each providing additional features: Standard, DMX, IDLA and MAX. RTI's FB-4 interface can be used with any ILDA compatible laser show projector, and can be placed directly at the laser (it is snap-on compatible to the RTI PIKO and RTI NANO remote pad attachment slot) and the

Russia - Lighting designer Roman Stolyarov has used a wide range of Clay Paky fixtures to create stunning lighting looks in celebration of global cosmetic company Oriflame's annual awards ceremony and banquet, which saw over 3000 employees attend.

Leading technical production house MAX'N'MAX created the concept for the event which was called Banquet of Oriflame Directors: What Dreams May Come and took place at Moscow's Gostiniy Dvor.

MAX'N'MAX designed an ultra-wide stage with dynamic LED screens at the end of the venue's large hall. To complement this, the team worked with Stolyarov to specify an impressive rig of 34 x Alpha Spot 1500 HPE, 28 x Sharpy Wash 330, 50 x Sharpys, 81 x Shotlight Wash and 24 x Stormy CC fixtures from Arlecchino Group.

"As the venue has a glass roof and part of the event happened during the day, we needed fixtures that would still perfo

Sweden - Mats Karlsson, an industry veteran with a string of successful products and positions with several major companies, has started Intendor - a product innovation consultancy.

"My mission is to help companies get ahead of their competition by helping them create useful, innovative, and differentiated products. Anyone who has visited a trade show in recent years can testify to the fact that you have to look long and hard to find something really new. As the competition heats up and product life cycles gets shorter, companies are becoming painfully aware of the need to innovate in order to stay competitive and profitable. But only a few know how to do it, Karlsson shares."

"After bringing successful products to life at several leading companies, I am now making my skills and experiences available to those who wants to succeed using true competitive advantage

Sweden - The Stadsteater in Borås - about 60km west of Gothenburg - is one of a number of high profile city theatre and cultural centres in the country which has invested in Robe moving lights.

The purchase of 19 LEDWash 800s currently sees 10 installed in the 500 capacity main house, with nine in the smaller 100 capacity studio space. The Stadsteater is located in a large facility - together with the culture centre and library - built in 1976 and featuring some classic 1970s retro architecture and décor.

They wanted to replace some of their colour scrollers explains Lighting Technician and house LD Michael Dimle - and are absolutely delighted with the results of the LEDWashes. The Stadsteater had some previous experience with Robe ColorSpot 700E ATs bought in 2008, and the reliability of these was one of the reasons they looked to Robe again.

Michael also works for

USA - The Bay Area-based band Primus is touring North America with a Meyer Sound LYON linear sound reinforcement system to deliver its quirky, bass-driven brand of alternative rock. Described by FOH engineer Jason Mills as a "really fast" system with plenty of punch, the LYON configuration is provided byPro Media/UltraSound of Martinez, California.

"LYON is a very snappy box," says Mills, who works triple duty as FOH engineer, production manager, and system tech. "It's responsive, punchy and clear. The fans have noticed, too - I'm getting more compliments after shows than ever before."

The full system for the tour includes 24 LYON-M main and 4 LYON-W wide-coverage line array loudspeakers, 12 700-HP subwoofers, and four UPJ-1P loudspeakers as front fills. Two CQ-2 and four MSL-4 loudspeakers are deployed as needed for corner front and out fill, whi

Azerbaijan - Audiences were left enthralled and entranced by two dazzling opening and closing ceremonies staged in the National Stadium in Baku, Azerbaijan, for the first European Games - which saw Belgian based engineering specialist WIcreations involved in making some key elements of these innovative shows come alive.

WIcreations was approached directly by California based production company FiveCurrents who produced the Ceremonies. WI's team was led by Yves Vervloet and worked closely with FiveCurrents' senior technical director Nick Eltis.

The Heist-op-den-Berg based company was tasked with helping create some major visual moments, including the magic (flying) carpet during the opening ceremony, and design and construction of three performer stages for the closing ceremony, complete with a Temple of Fire rising up from beneath the largest one.

"It was a fantastic ev

Canada - Robe BMFL Spots and Blades were an integral element of the lighting scheme designed by Pierre Marleau of Orange Frog Productions Inc. for the Grandstand concert stage at the 2015 Calgary Exhibition & Stampede, arguably the world's most famous rodeo, exhibition and festival held annually in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Pierre, based in the same city, has been a lighting professional for over 25 years, starting his career in the world of theatre and musicals, with which he has toured worldwide. He's been lighting the Stampede's Grandstand Show for the last 19 years which sees a line-up of international artists play in front of 20,000 people nightly for 10 days plus a preview evening.

The lighting equipment was supplied in collaboration with BML Blackbird of Secuacus, New Jersey and Stagelite from Winnipeg, Canada working a joint venture initiative project, managed by VP of

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