Theater De Storm in Winterswijk, the Netherlands, has been a client of Martijn Klein Gebbink of Frontline Audio & Vision for 20 years, and last year, he delivered an impressive package of 124 x Robe lighting products, including 12 x ESPRITE moving lights fitted with the HCF (High Colour Fidelity) LED engine, 80 x T11 Profiles, 12 x TX1 PosiProfiles and 20 x T15 Fresnels.
The theatre has three halls – two used for theatre and concert productions and one for parties. The main hall seats 609 and the smaller one 219. The venue stages a host of different received shows, averaging six or seven a week, necessitating quick turnarounds.
The new lights were part of a major LED upgrade and followed a shootout conducted some time earlier by Martijn, resulting in Robe being the chosen brand.
“We needed to replace the old profiles, PCs and fresnels,” explained head technician Sander Wilderink, who has been working there 8 years and works alongside Jocelyn Waalderbos, both of them taking care of all things technical, including lighting.
Important for Theater De Storm with these new luminaires was the zoom range and the output.
The previous Profile zooms had covered a range of 17-43 degrees, which has now been expanded to 5-50 degrees with the T11 Profiles. They also scrutinised the colour temperature and colour mixing systems carefully before choosing the best lights for their needs.
Something additional was required for illuminating bands and musical shows in the main hall; they needed something powerful and versatile when it came to effects, and for this, the team decided on the ESPRITE HCFs.
Originally, explained Sander, they thought that the TX1s would work in these rear positions, as the fixture is designed to operate both as a moving head profile or as a static but repositionable profile, but then realised a different type of luminaire would be a better choice.
The ESPRITE HCFs also work extremely well as general back lighting, whatever the style of show onstage.
Advantages with the new Robe lighting setup include the fixtures being extremely quick to focus and programme. Having a multi spectral LED light source expands the adaptability of the luminaires and the colours, “which are intuitive to adjust and programme,” confirms Sander.
He adds that they also wanted luminaires utilising the European style of focus methodology – with both plano convex lenses mounted facing each other on one side of the fixture.
Most incoming shows will typically bring their own production lighting rigs to use above the stage and will utilise the house bridge, tower and side lighting – they can hook in their own consoles via DMX or sACN. “We’ve had a fantastic reaction from all those who have come in and used the new lighting – including all the freelancers,” noted Sander.
This is one of the largest Robe installations that Frontline has supplied and installed to date. The company works on all sorts of projects involving lighting, video and audio and is also a rental company … with Robe LEDBeam 350s in its inventory, among other lights!
For theatre installations, Martijn comments that Robe is a “top brand with a good range that is easy to control,” and mentions that they also enjoy a great relationship with Robe’s Benelux distributor, Controllux, which is vital for any supplier.
Martijn also designed and installed a complete new power and data wiring infrastructure for the theatre which was part of this upgrade – after consulting with all those working there as to their specific needs. Now, wherever you might need to plug in a light, there is power and a DMX cable, which was all part of the master plan, including the installation of LSC APS (Advanced Power System) power distribution.
The installation was completed in a tidy 4 weeks, during which time Theater De Storm ran on an interim setup – for seamless operation – before the final switchover.