The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in Stratford-upon-Avon is one of the world's premiere classical theatre ensembles. A recent purchase of Martin MAC III Profile™ moving head luminaires by the RSC has further highlighted the company’s leading reputation. A senior member of RSC Lighting describes the process that led to their acquisition.
When Artistic Director Michael Boyd invited Wolfgang Göbbel to light his 2009 production of As You Like It at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Courtyard Theatre, previous experience suggested that the lighting would be anything but conventional. In particular, Wolfgang expressed an interest in using very bright sources with flexible positioning and beam-shaping to work the diagonal axes of the Courtyard’s thrust stage. For Production Electrician Simon Spencer and his team, the search was on for a suitable fixture that would meet not only Wolfgang’s needs, but also satisfy Michael’s stringent requirement for exceptionally quiet equipment.
For the proud owners of the new units, the final hurdle was to rig them in the desired location, where no rigging position existed. In conjunction with RSC Automation, Simon and his team constructed and installed 900mm x 500mm rigging frames, flown from Stage Technologies BT200 winches via a network of divert pulleys on the roof girders (affectionately known as clusters), allowing proportional control of the height of the fixtures in addition to the regulation attributes. It only remained to find a way to correct unwanted motion introduced by pan and tilt of the fixture. Fortunately, following the successful launch of RSC Lightlock© at PLASA the previous autumn, the ideal solution was at hand and Lightlock had its first show deployment anywhere in the world, rather appropriately, at the RSC in Stratford (RSC Lightlock is now available globally under licence from Total Solutions Group plc.).
Following a successful initial installation, Martin MAC III Profile units have proved very popular with lighting designers across the spectrum, making major contributions to Tim Mitchell’s lighting for Gregory Doran’s production of Twelfth Night and to Hugh Vanstone’s lighting for Dominic Cooke’s production of Arabian Nights, and also featuring in Jon Clarke’s lighting for David Farr’s production of King Lear and Howard Harrison’s lighting for Rupert Goold’s production of Romeo and Juliet and
King Lear
As well as being an adaptable and very bright source, LDs have valued the contribution these versatile units have made to creating storms, waves, ripples, a "magic" crystal ball, mystic sorcery, transformation and illusion. Wolfgang Göbbel, the initiator of the entire process, specified the MAC III again when he returned to the Courtyard to light Antony and Cleopatra, this time choosing to explore the space from the opposite angle with high-level three-quarter back light positions.
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