This is organised by OISTAT - the International Organization of Scenographers, Theatre Architects and Technicians - and is the world's largest scenographic exhibition. The event took over three halls of the Prague Industrial Palace at the Exhibition Grounds to the north of the city.
Scenofest featured two main performance spaces. The first was the 18m high Tower of Babel, built from scaffolding and steel and conceived by Sean Crowley, head of design at the UK's Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. Technical design of the Tower was by PQ's technical director Ian Evans, head of technical studies at the RWCMD.
Crowley, Evans and Jean Guy Le Cat also designed the other main performance space, The Scenofest Stage, built with thousands of Rockwool filled cardboard bricks. Both these spaces used Robe moving lights as the primary fixtures in designs by Netherlands-based Henk Van der Geest.
The 13m outside diameter 'cylindrical' style Tower of Babel featured six Robe ColorWash 1200 AT Washes and eight ColorSpot 1200 ATs rigged at several different levels around its perimeter and inside rims.
Apart from being used for individual performances and student works, the Robes were also used for lectures, seminars taking place in the tower and for the many 'Babel Moments' happening throughout the Quadrennial period. They were controlled via a GrandMA console, which was taken over by the different groups of students as they presented their shows.
Having a flexible moving light system available for the Tower of Babel was central to the design explains Van Der Geest: "It had to be a rig that everyone could use in a wide variety of ways and for lots of different effects and situation - effectively almost an I provisional style of lighting."
In the cardboard Scenofest Theatre, six Robe ColorWash 575 ATs were used on one of the FOH LX bars - for general lighting and stage washing duties. The other four CW 575 ATs supplied to the PQ were utilised over in the Alfred Vedvove Theatre in one of the smaller halls.
The Robes were supplied to the PQ by Slovakian rental company Q-99, with some coming directly from the Robe factory in Roznov in a deal co-ordinated by Robe's International Sales Manager, Harry von den Stemmen. He comments: "It was a great opportunity to associate with one of the most innovative international theatre and performance organisations."
(Jim Evans)
