The festival each year welcomes productions, participants and professionals to Scarborough from across the UK, to create a week of performances, discussions, training and over 180 workshops covering every area of theatre and including technical theatre. Technical director, Nic Watson, explains, "On the technical side, we take on a crew of about 60 young people, selected from hundreds of applicants, who build and manage the stages for the performance groups who've also been selected."
He continues, "Some of the venues already exist. We take over other venues - like sports halls - and turn them into black box venues and other bespoke performance spaces. The technical crew learn to operate the shows and help with the plotting sessions etc. The theatre and stage building is part of the training and the access they get to equipment, like that from PixelRange, is amazing."
The PixelRange LED lighting products were installed in the Ocean Room at The Scarborough Spa Complex. Used for workshops during the day, the Ocean Room was transformed at night into a light entertainment venue, where students were able to experiment with the lighting sets. The wash units were also used to illuminate the corridors of the black box theatres that were created.
Watson adds, "The PixelRange equipment is new and exciting technology which had a great impact - on venue and students alike. It's great for the students to learn industry standard brands like PixelRange and it adds a different level to the performances."
Holly Kendrick, director and CEO of festival, adds, "NSDF is extremely proud of its Workshop and Technical Training Programme, which simply wouldn't be possible without the wonderful and generous support from companies like PixelRange and Stage Electrics. The technical support we receive which directly translates into the variety of training we can offer to our students meant that this year we had twice the number of requests to be on our Technical Team than we could accommodate."
(Jim Evans)
