Robe - LEADERBOARD - Feb 2025
HOF - Banner Apr 2025

Rigging / Staging

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UK - Technical production company Maestra Group has launched a scenic division. Based at Maestra’s London HQ, Maestra Scenic will offer services including CNC, carpentry and joinery, fabrication and engineering, painting and finishing as well as integration of other technical detailing - such as lighting, video or audio - into scenic fabrication projects.
The new division will employ a team of 20 full-time staff, who will be led by director of production Mark Davies, former director of technical operations at the National Theatre and sales director at Stage One Creative Services.
Davies comments: “The goals for good scenic companies are about meeting and then exceeding client expectations in all aspects - quality and build, finishing, being on-budget and ease of installation. It is essential to have the right people and processes all working harmoniously and with

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UK - With today’s temperatures hitting around 104F in some areas of the UK - making it the hottest July day on record - St Ives-based Le Mark Group has come up with an inventive way for its production and warehouse operatives to keep cool: Utility kilts.
Stuart Gibbons, Le Mark’s MD comments: “It’s tough for our production team in this heat. I had seen utility kilts being worn by riggers and technicians in Las Vegas, Dubai and Scotland (of course), but thick woollen tartan can be hot. I was happy to offer these ‘supper cool’ and very well ventilated tough cotton utility kilts to all those operatives that wanted them - free of charge, of course!”
Gibbons continues: “Anything we can do to make life a little more comfortable for our production team, we are happy to offer.”
(LSi Online)
Renkus-Heinz - Banner - April-May 2025

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South Africa - As live production stages get bigger, heavier and more complicated with equipment suspended above the audience, safety is imperative. Ilan Bahar from Eilon Ron StageMaster recently visited South Africa, and in conjunction with local distributor DWR Distribution, presented load cell demonstrations to a variety of rental companies in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban.
Eilon, a family business, was established over 40 years ago and their safety monitoring systems are used in diverse applications including entertainment stages, aerospace with sales to NASA, wind turbines and shipment weighing to mention a few.
“The Eilon Ron StageMaster concept is very simple,” said Ilan Bahar. “When you hang equipment above people, you have to know the load of every point because there are limitations, such as the limitations of a roof. You have to make sure that yo

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UK - Audio Light Systems called upon the expertise of Doughty Engineering to help deliver a new media studio at Edinburgh University's Argyle House.
The University which has a fast-developing programme of Distance Learning at Scale, had an existing media studio but was struggling to fully support the programme of media production required. Audio Light Systems was brought on board to assist with the creation of a new TV studio and gallery on floor D of Argyle house as Neil McLucas, Audio Light Systems' senior technician explains:
"The TV studio already had a space prepared with new wiring and decoration. Our task was to develop the gallery, housed in an existing acoustic sound booth adjacent to the studio. The specification was for the supply and installation of sound, video, studio lighting curtain and tracks and so we got in touch with Doughty Engineering to supply

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USA - Prolyte Group has partnered with Houston entrepreneur Craig Koopersmith to distribute Prolyte products under his rigging and trussing services company, Sabre Structures.
Koopersmith is the CEO of the Sabre Group of Companies, which also includes service exhibit and design firm Skyline Displays of Houston, and corporate interiors and signage specialist, Innovative Environments. The Group supports the tradeshow, display and interior environment sectors and works with Houston-based clients ranging from sole proprietors to Fortune 100 corporations.
The addition of Prolyte products will complement Sabre Structures’ existing display modules whilst enabling the company to offer larger, truss-based tradeshow exhibits and stands. It will also expand the Group’s operation into the event staging and entertainment sectors.
Keith Bohn, Prolyte general sales manager

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UK - The PLASA Awards for Innovation 2019 are now open for entries from PLASA Show exhibitors. Products from all sectors of the entertainment technology industry are invited to be entered for the awards by 16 August.
Judged independently by a panel of industry experts, the Awards for Innovation are respected throughout the industry for recognising innovative new product design. All successful nominees will feature in the Innovation Gallery during PLASA Show from 15-17 September at London Olympia, culminating in a ceremony at the show on 16 September where the winner will be announced.
Product entries must demonstrate a new style of thinking, improve technical practice and safety, introduce new technology, materials or techniques, or offer new commercial advantages. Furthermore, an Award for Sustainability is reserved for products which achieve a significant reduction

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UK - Prolight Concepts Group has announced the appointment of Jeff Davenport area sales manager. Davenport will represent the company in the north of the UK including Scotland. He was previously employed as a business development manager for Hawthorn and as a UK sales manager for EMD Music.
He comments: “It's a pleasure to now be representing the fastest growing supplier to the UKs event and install industry. With so many event ready products available next day from their huge stock holding, Prolight is a really exciting company to know for every size of business.”
(Jim Evans)

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Europe - Entertainment engineering specialist WIcreations is working with Rammstein and their production team on the current three-month stadium and festival tour around the UK and Europe including Russia and Latvia.
WIcreations took the opportunity of working with the band to launch its new integrated WImotion system, which gives precise control and synchronisation of individual and group moving chain hoists utilising SIL3 group position monitoring.
WI, well known for their own industrial strength automation and engineering solutions, was asked to supply several custom staging and automation elements for the tour.
All this is being co-ordinated for WI by Koen Peeters and Hans Willems, who were asked onboard by the tour’s technical consultant Jeremy Lloyd of UK based Wonder Works.
They have worked closely with Rammstein’s own creative team, a collabora

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USA - The ADJ Group of Companies has announced the appointment of Charlotte Wester as its new tradeshow manager. Based out of the group’s Los Angeles HQ, she will be responsible for organisation of the company’s stands at the numerous tradeshows at which it exhibits each year, representing its brands including Elation Professional, ADJ Lighting, Acclaim Lighting, Global Truss America and Avante Audio.
After graduating with a BFA in Lighting Design, Wester moved to California to work for Stage-Tech as a project manager, draftsman and account manager. During this time she expanded her knowledge and experience working on projects with production companies including Live Nation, Trevanna Entertainment and Michael Levitt Productions.
“Tradeshows are very important not only for staying in touch with our existing customer base and showcasing our new products, but also f

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UK - AED’s SL18 Showlift was named Engineering Product of the Year’ at the annual ABTT Awards, which took place during the ABTT Theatre Show in June.
The DMX-controlled automated production lift offers theatre and live event lighting designers a new set of tools to add dynamics. It’s quiet, smooth and fast operation, and the fact that it can be controlled by a 2-channel DMX signal from a lighting desk, has been attracting attention since it was launched.
The ABTT Awards’ panel of judges praised the AED-SL18 as “a piece of engineering equipment with the lighting designer in mind. With a small lifting platform that can take the weight of a moving light and controlled from the same DMX system as the moving light, the Showlift allows all the programming to sit in one place.”
David Baker, commercial manager at AED UK, comments: “We’re thrilled that th

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USA - Prolyte Group has announced a rental partnership with Legend Theatrical of Scotts Valley, California.
Legend Theatrical offers a complete array of technical services to the entertainment industry and is a frontrunner on providing new and innovative products to its clients.
Dave Dunning, CEO of Legend Theatrical, first encountered Prolyte’s Verto truss at the LDI Conference in 2016. “After meeting with Prolyte, I kept thinking about how Verto truss could improve our labour efficiency,” Dunning recalls. “At the time, we were working on a couple of projects with short load in times. I realized we could cut a massive amount of time if we had Verto truss in stock. In fact, it could have changed the entire event setup. It was at this moment that I decided it was time to add Verto truss to our inventory.” Legend Theatrical now carries the largest rental inve

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UK - Technical event specialists Light Fantastic Production Services partnered with FUTR Summit to produce its recent event at London’s Business Design Centre.
Billed as Europe's only annual summit focused on fresh thinking and progressive change in the future of retail, marketing and commerce, FUTR brings together a diverse mixture of international brands and retailers.
Featuring over 200 guest speakers, this high-profile event required planning and delivery of a comprehensive audio, video, scenic and technical support solution, to create the perfect environment in which to welcome both presenters and delegates.
Keeping the main stage presentations crystal clear within the venue’s bright central atrium, LFPS deployed their new Panasonic RZ 12K laser projectors.
In tandem with a main stage auditorium, the company also created a pair of ancillary stages

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Europe - Milos has reently introduced redesigned short truss segments in its M290 range, which incorporate thicker bracing tubes.
The redesign of the tubes increases the shear load capacity of the short truss sections, resulting in strength equal to that of Milos regular truss sections.
With the introduction of this new design, short truss sections can now be placed anywhere within a truss structure without having any adverse impact on the structure’s loading capacity. The planning process is therefore simplified and the risk of errors during structure assembly is eliminated, says the company.
(Jim Evans)

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USA - Las Vegas-based Alpine Rigging has invested in Kinesys’ new Apex hoists.
Alpine Rigging was founded by Brent Armstrong in 2011 and works in all sectors of the entertainment and leisure industry, including sports events, e-sports and competitive video gaming, as well as corporates / industrials and music-based shows - concerts, festivals and touring.
It was the touring market that led Armstrong initially to Kinesys where he perceives it to be “the industry leader” in automation systems, and Alpine’s initial Kinesys purchases came in 2015, comprising 23 half-ton Liftket motors with Kinesys Elevation drives and Vector control. These have been working constantly ever since.
The purchase was prompted by a series of events for famous video game developer and e-sports tournament organizer Riot Games, where the requirement was to move large LED walls. It w

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UK - Registration is now open for PLASA Show 2019, which returns from 15-17 September to bring over 200 brands lighting, audio, AV, rigging and staging brands to Olympia London.
Mirroring the growth of the AV sector, this year’s show will present an array of next-generation LED screen technology from major players such as Canon and Midwich. Furthermore, Netgear will share its networking and integration solutions.
The audio presence at the show has been growing rapidly over the last few years and in 2019, the show will welcome Void Acoustics and CUK Audio in addition to Bose, d&b audiotechnik, Yamaha and Adam Hall among others.
Meanwhile, live audio demos will double this year, with L-Acoustics taking a dedicated demo space and KV2 Audio demo'ing its products, which fe

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USA - It’s been a year since Tomcat and JTE joined Area Four Industries America in a 25,000sq.ft shared office and warehouse space in Thousand Oaks, California.
At this location, the companies have been able to provide their customers on or near the west coast of the US and Canada with faster delivery, local customer service, and full technical support.
The Tomcat and JTE factory in Knoxville, Tennessee, supplies the warehouse with the most popular sizes and lengths of Tomcat and JTE products to ensure their customers’ orders are packed up and shipped out efficiently.
The west coast office team includes Adrian Forbes-Black, vice-president of sales and marketing, supported by Douglas Debusschere and Gene Matera, both western regional sales managers. Also ready to serve is the newest addition to the team, Sean Carr, who is a sales and customer service represen

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UK - The Blue Butterfly Dance Company has selected Le Mark Nocturne dance floor for its new studios.
The Blue Butterfly Dance Company, based in Eastleigh, Hampshire, recently opened new studios in the town centre. Built in a previously derelict site, they required new, versatile flooring for all the performance spaces.
“Before we started work, the unit was run-down and empty,” said Amy Fern, principal, Blue Butterfly Dance Company. “It was in a terrible state, so we had lots of work to do and only 12 weeks to do it in, before we opened. Our floors are used for all types of dance - ballet, tap, modern, contemporary, as well as fitness and yoga, so we needed a hard-wearing, multi-purpose floor.
“We chose Le Mark flooring as we felt it was much better value for money compared to other dance flooring. Now we have three beautiful studios, all with Le Mark N

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India - ProLyft chain hoists are supplied with a unique life time warranty, which is upheld by all ProLyft service points. The goal of these service points is to offer a trained team of professional technicians that are capable of repairing and maintaining manual and electrical chain hoists.
All SP’s have stock in spare parts and offer quick and smooth servicing and repair. Service points use the ProLyft database to store and provide all servicing information, providing optimal service and smooth communication. Importantly, they perform annual inspection and recertification in accordance to the life time warranty of ProLyft hoists.
In order to optimize the ProLyft service in the Indian sub-continent, Prolyte Asia Pacific is has announced that, with immediate effect, Natura RigTech, based in Mumbai, will provide all ProLyft service point related services mentioned abo

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UK - Broadweigh Bluetooth is now an award-winning product - despite launching just one week ago. The product which made its debut on the A.C. Entertainment stand at the ABTT Theatre Show in Alexandra Palace, was awarded the Widget of the Year accolade at the annual awards ceremony.
The judging panel, which comprised an experienced group of working practitioners and industry peers, comments: "As a quick way to provide monitoring of small rigs, the Broadweigh load cell shackle - in conjunction with a Bluetooth connected device running the Broadweigh app - is exceptionally useful for those touring shows that require up to 12 points of rigging. The App also sums selected load cells to enable a maximum load to be identified. Use of this product will greatly speed up prep days."
Kelly Voysey, sales and marketing manager at Mantracourt Electronics, Broadweigh's parent company

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UK - London-based technical event specialists Light Fantastic Production Services has announced six appointments at its Borehamwood base.
Five of the new additions have taken up technical roles in the company’s warehouse and fabrication workshop, whilst the sixth new team member has joined the project management team.
Jed Burns and Taylor Bunn have joined to expand the capabilities of the LFPS in-house fabrication workshop. Lauren Tanner, Joe Bentwood and Pius Yiga have become warehouse technicians, whilst Ned Lay has taken up the role of a project manager.
LFPS managing director Rob Myer comments: “It’s always a pleasure to welcome new talent to the Light Fantastic family, particularly during what has been an extremely busy period for us. Adding these new faces to our team adds strength throughout key areas of our business - we are really looking forward t

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Europe - Alt-folk rockers Mumford & Sons are midway through a world tour promoting their fourth studio album, Delta, which dropped at the end of 2018. The live show features a lighting design by long term LD Ed Warren and Phil Kaikoura which includes an extensive Kinesys automation system.
The Kinesys Apex System being used on the tour was chosen and invested in by UK-based Brilliant Stages who designed and provided the mothergrid system. Also in use are a series of bespoke spine trusses designed to span under venue score boards. The Kinesys motors are mounted inside Brilliant’s own custom truss sections, with two motors per section of truss that are then attached to the mothergrid spines through connection plates.
The lighting design started with Ed and Phil receiving a brief from the band containing -amongst other things - some cryptic statements about w

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UK - White Light has recently acquired the assets of Imax Lighting, a London and Bristol-based dry hire company.
Imax Lighting’s inventory will now be available through WL, and the acquired company's founder, Gary Churchill, will be joining WL as a consultant. Also joining WL is Rodney George, who will oversee the sale of used equipment to small businesses, theatres, colleges and live music venues in the role of used equipment manager.
WL has also made three key appointments, bringing in Carmelo Amenta as technical account manager responsible for broadcast projects, large-scale award ceremonies and live music concerts; Ian Charlampowicz has joined as senior account manager and will work within the broadcast media sector; and Jade Harrison has been appointed as business development manager.
WL has also expanded the teams within its managed venues. This includes

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Europe - Milos has introduced the Armor Cart, a new hoist utility vehicle that provides safe and convenient transport and storage for up to four hoists.
Made from aluminium, the Armor Cart comes in two versions: model MAC-01-4025-A1 holds four 250kg hoists, and model MAC-01-2100-A1 holds two one tonne hoists.
Due to its compact form factor, and the possibility to stack Armor Carts on top of each other, transport volume is reduced up to 50% compared to flight cases, says the manufacturer. In addition, its open-air design reduces humidity within the interior and allows your hoists to dry faster, thereby helping to prevent corrosion.
(Jim Evans)

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UK - The Association of British Theatre Technicians’ Annual Theatre Awards took place after the first day of the 2019 ABTT Theatre Show at Alexandra Palace, London.
The five awards for lighting, sound and engineering products of the year, widget and stand of the year, were complemented by the announcement of the ABTT’s technician of the year for 2019.
The lighting product of the year went to the Robe T1 Profile. The judges said: “This is a new moving light that has clearly had a great deal of thought put into its development. Robe’s new T1 fixture delivers an immensely useable theatre lantern. It is light weight, quiet and extremely well featured. Of particular note, the scrim function and the brown/blue focus tweak on the hard edge on the PC lens version is a welcome addition to the lighting designer’s pallet.”
Mick Hannaford, managing director, R
  1. IBS appoints Glen Dougherty
  2. Hawthorn names business development manager
  3. LFPS delivers King Kong to Harrods
  4. Sixty82 is right fit for Tower Theatre Company
  5. Area Four publishes A4 Magazine
  6. ABTT 2019: AC-ET showcases theatrical range
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PLASA Leeds 2025 - Large MPU - April 2025
Showlight (Tickets) - MPU - Jan 2025

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