Robe installed in Ugala Theatre in Viljandi
- Details
The most recent round of refurbishment at Ugala in 2017 resulted in a new stage machinery system for the 300-capacity main house, which also means they can now configure the space in any format.
With this new versatility, they decided the time was also right for some new moving lights in the rig, and after a lot of consultation, decided on 10 x Robe DL7S Profiles and 10 x BMFL Blades.
The town also has the only technical theatre training facility in Estonia which is a department of the Tartu University, and happens to have a Robe moving light rig!
Mari-Riin Villemsoo is one of the venue’s four person lighting technical team, who are all also lighting designers in their own right, and she reports that having these new moving lights in the inventory is making a major difference to their day-to-day operation. Mari-Riin has been working full time at the theatre for a year and before that, worked as a freelance designer after graduating with the Lighting Design & Technical Theatre qualification from Tartu University.
The DL7S Profiles are used for front lighting, a task for which the shutters are “perfect” says Marie-Riin. The output is also suitable for their needs. “Using moving lights here for front light saves huge amounts of time”.
Above the stage, the use of conventionals is limited, so once again moving lights bring greater flexibility and efficiency.
She likes the colours in both the BMFLs and DL7S Profiles. “They are extremely well matched and work complimentarily”, and due to the vast colour range they can also be matched very well to the gelled conventional lights that are still in the system.
The lights are controlled from an ETC Gio console, with a smaller Gio @5 for the 150-seater black box space.
(Jim Evans)
