First published Lighting and Sound International July 2010
UK – For four days, from the 12-15 June 2010, Westminster’s Central Hall was buzzing with the ideas and voices of 420 theatre design and engineering specialists. An international crowd, they hailed from 31 countries, some from as far a field as Australia and Singapore. All were in London to participate in the International Theatre Engineering and Architecture Conference 2010.
This year, the quadrennial event’s theme was: Ensuring performing arts buildings are fit for purpose, now and in the future. It proved to be a stimulating and educational four days. Previous conferences have addressed varying perspectives on theatre architecture and planning, refurbishments, acoustics, stage engineering, operations and safety. This year many of these topics were revisited and brought up to date. The latest developments in stage lighting, audio and video systems and digital projection were highlighted as part of the 40 hours of professional presentations and discussions.
The Conference kicked off with a plenary discussion that posited the question: ‘Do we really need any more theatres?’ Sheelagh Barnard presented The Birmingham Opera Company’s most recent achievements from the perspective that the company has no fixed home and performs in empty buildings and found spaces. Matt Atwood’s discussed his involvement with BITE at the Barbican and the challenges presented by being tied to a single building and Stephen Jolly of Buro Happold illustrated some of the techniques engineers and consultants can use today to remodel or upgrade existing buildings.
Richard Brett
In the afternoon I then had the opportunity to present my own views on Practical Sustainability alongside Tim Atkinson dof the Theatres Trust, Mike Atkinson (no relation to Tim) of the National Theatre and Andy Hutton from Max Fordham.
Tim Atkinson explained the concept and benefits of The Theatres Trust’s EcoVenue initiative, Mike Atkinson showcased the numerous and creative measures the National Theatre has taken to cut CO2 emissions and reduce waste, while Andy Hutton illustrated some of the energy saving ideas used in the design and build of Hull Truck Theatre. I argued that in many ways theatre is already sustainable and that whilst we should be mindful of the waste, energy and natural resources we use we should never compromise on creativity.
Later in the afternoon I attended a lively discussion on The Future of Stage Lighting Control, chaired by the extremely engaging and impassioned lighting designer Richard Pilbrow. He talked of the hopes he had when he first started his career in lighting, those he’d seen realised and those, which had fallen by the wayside. Tony Award winning LD Neil Austin pinpointed perfectly some of the frustrating restrictions lighting control platforms impose and talked about the improvements he would now like to see in the future – some of which, we discovered from later speakers, are already in progress.
“I attended the lighting control session and released my inner geek. I thought it was great to hear the viewpoints of LDs, programmers, and coders. Having frequently been the interface between designer and desk, I believe that the usability and relevance of desk control, both to the designer and programmer, has not always been paramount in the minds of control system designers. I was especially pleased that the subject of ‘augmented reality’ came up, as that seems the next logical step to WYSIWYG to me.”
Tim Atkinson, of the Theatres Trust
Neil Austin
Control system developer Robert Bell and ETC product manager Sarah Clausen discussed the exciting technical innovations that are likely to simplify lighting designers and operators tasks. Eric Cornwell showed delegates futuristic examples of soft and hardware being developed in other business sectors and discussed how they might be applied in stage lighting control.
“If you take a video wall the reason they look good is because each tile is calibrated – each section is able to communicate with the others to figure out which is best colour space. Lighting technology should be extracting that idea and putting it on every fixture on the rig. So each dichroic fixture, for example, can be easily matched to others because it knows its own colour capabilities; the desk needs only tell fixture what colour or setting is necessary to achieve, rather than making small adjustments to match it to the rest of the rig. This technology is the promise of the ACN control protocol. My position is that as lighting rigs get smarter, manufacturers can build on their own products’ strengths, rather than needing to assist LDs in making up for other parts of a rig’s weakness. The future is definitely in compatibility and interoperability – and ETC equipment is at the forefront of that.”
Sarah Clausen, Product Manager for ETC
Few sessions were particularly controversial. One comes to expect at least a few heated discussions to break out (and not just over The Curve in Leicester, which predictably saw poor Iain Gillie – executive producer for the venue – get a verbal kicking!) There was some tension in the session during the “Practical Sustainability” session, in particular when Andy Hutton from Max Fordham spoke of a “perceived problem” with the flourescent houselights at Hull Truck Theatre. To be fair most would argue that fluorescent houselights, which snap out at the bottom of the fade, are more of a problem than he would have us believe!
Several sessions ran over time, due to over verbose or too many speakers, which is always frustrating. Delegates often missed the chance to ask questions or get a real discussion going, which is the most fun and often valuable part of the conference. A number of sessions had several speakers seemingly saying the same thing. Having said that such debates would always overflow into the breaks, making for plenty of lively and animated conversations throughout the building and outside.
“This is the 4th conference I’ve attended and the speakers and delegates were as entertaining and interesting as ever. There was perhaps a sense that as an industry we should get better at talking about all projects – not just those that we have been involved in personally and/or corporately. The ‘manufacturer and sponsor advertising sessions’ at the end of each morning should definitely take a lower profile so delegates get the opportunity to share and learn for longer; rather than be presented with opportunities to ‘buy’! Highlights of the conference included Josh Dachs on Theatre Forms and Vasily Laffineur on the use of BIMs in theatre building.”
Andy Hayles, Managing Director, Charcoalblue Theatre Consultants
Andy Hayles, Managing Director of Charcoalblue
Several sessions featured discussions on specific topics from different perspectives: Stage management and backstage systems were discussed by stage manager Antonia Collins of the Welsh College of Music and Drama, theatre consultant – Philip Heselton of Arup and manufacturer of stage management systems Richard Cuthbert of GDS; Stage Lighting Installations were discussed by chief electrician of RSC, Vince Herbert, consultant for Arup Richard Bunn and ETC’s Steve Terry, vice president of R&D in the USA.
“Perhaps too much of the subject material was already known to me. Back in 2006, I particularly enjoyed the more off-beat sessions: Himanshu Burte’s discussion of the Koothambalam theatre form in Kerala; Jaroslav Malina’s accounts of disguising ugly proscenium arches in Communist-era Czech theatres. Next time let’s learn about some current non-Western theatre practice: what is being played in all these new venues in Dubai and Singapore?”
Alex Wardle – lighting designer and part time theatre consultant – Arup
However it was “Getting Sound into the Auditorium”, chaired by Alex Wardle, that seemed to generate some of the most positive feedback – sorry, couldn’t resist! Jason Barnes, former head of sound at Bristol Old Vic, Dominic Bikey, head of sound at the Young Vic and Greg Clarke production engineer took an informal approach to their presentations. This worked very well and plenty of discussion was had – no mean feat given the fact that the session started at 8:30 in the morning and followed the previous evening’s opening night Thames Cruise and diner. Delegates had benefited from a rather generously sponsored bar for three full hours. Credit must therefore go to ETC, Northern Light and Serapid for the varying degrees of hangover experienced the following day!
“The wide range of subjects discussed at the sessions and the huge wealth of experience represented by the delegates led to some fascinating discussions about the future of the theatre industry at large, not just about building new theatres”
Bryan Raven – Managing Director, White Light
The conference closed with a lively and stimulating debate that raised all sorts of issues relating to the design processes and management of building and how the different disciplines involved in the building or refurbishment of a performance venue interact. Clearly then there are still plenty of questions left for people to answer and many of the finer details of how we work together left to resolve.
Richard Brett
The success of the Conference shows that this kind of event is important to future developments in theatre planning, engineering and architecture around the world, and we hope that delegates found their attendance at the event of value. Work has started on transcribing the Conference papers ready for publication. Previously the papers have been printed as full colour A4 books, but with the increased amount of video and graphical information used in the 2010 Conference, we are considering making the proceedings available as a DVD. This is likely to be more economic than printing and would allow relevant material to be searched for more easily.”
Richard Brett, Conference Director
Sarah Rushton-Read
