Biola Youth Theatre is a true theatre company, rather than a high school class or college workshop, and is one of a select few youth theatre companies that work in partnership with a university - in this case Biola University of La Mirada, California. The high-school aged students are required to work both on stage and backstage during the course of the program. Part of this program includes running the lighting console for productions.
As well as providing a Fat Frog console for the production, Oberon also supplied Color Kinetics' Color Blasts and Color Blazes as well as a Reel-EFX DF-50 haze machine. "The Fat Frog was great," remarks Strand. "I've always liked its features and how easy it is to learn. However, it was also easy enough for the students to learn, so they could be the programmers of the show as well as the operators."
Oberon will be collaborating with the youth theatre group again in this summer's production of The Wizard of Oz. "We are hoping to use some additional equipment for the summer production," comments Strand. "High End Color Commands are ideally what we would like and, hopefully, the new Zero 88 Frog 2!"
After being previewed at last year's PLASA and LDI shows, the new Frog 2 was officially launched at the beginning of February. The Frog 2 has 2,048 DMX channels, a built-in touch screen and a powerful yet easy-to-learn operating system. Zero 88 products are distributed exclusively in North America by A.C.T Lighting Inc.
(Lee Baldock)