Robe - LEADERBOARD - Feb 2025
Doughty - Banner - from 6 June 2025

Rigging / Staging

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UK - Hertfordshire's Radlett Centre is smoothly gearing itself up for a busy autumn season after investing in a Unitrack system from pioneering entertainment engineers at Triple E.

The venue - which provides theatre, art and music, and kids' entertainment in affluent Radlett - upgraded to Triple E's Unitrack following seven years of using outdated standard theatre tracks.

"The tracks we were using were bolted together with small nuts and bolts making them time consuming to change and move, the bobbins tended to get jammed in the joints and the whole thing was pretty unreliable," says the Radlett Centre's Myles Robinson. "I instantly saw the benefits of the Triple E track design: quick to assemble and dismantle, quick to move the entire track using G clamps to rig it rather than fixed bolts as with our old track; the joints are less of an issue due to the sturdy

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Australia - Stage Technologies has increased its Australian rentals presence substantially with two major projects. Saturday's official opening of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the Capitol Theatre in Sydney marks Stage Technologies' second rental in Australia in as many months. The company also provided an automation system on Legally Blonde, currently playing at Sydney's Lyric Theatre.

Having automated the shows in London's West End and on tour, Stage Technologies has designed rental automation systems that allow both productions to repeat the magic for Australian audiences.

Before landing in Oz, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang ran at the London Palladium from April 2002 to September 2005, and was followed by tours in the UK and internationally. Stage Technologies designed a sophisticated automation and control system to cover everything from simple scenery moves an

Doughty - Banner - from 6 June 2025

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USA - Gerriets International has announced two new flooring products: Vario Color and Vario Sparkle. Gerriets' Vario has long been beloved by dance companies and scenic and event designers for its exceptional durability and portability; it rolls up for compact storage and easy transport, then unrolls to lie perfectly flat.

With a range of 183 colours, the new Vario Color line creates a whole new spectrum of possibilities for performance, touring, exhibiting, and other applications in which a hard-wearing, portable floor is required, says the company. Vario Color is available in matte and glossy finish and was among various new products Gerriets exhibited at LDI 2012 in October.

Vario Sparkle is an eye-catching new event flooring that has glitter embedded in the surface. Sparkle is available in six variations: white with silver or gold glitter; black with silver or gold glitter

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UK - Birmingham Hippodrome has announced the successful completion of its Stage Appeal having raised the target of £1m towards extensive refurbishments costing over £2m.

The 30-year old stage was completely replaced, over 500 light-fittings were upgraded to LED, the orchestra pit was refurbished, and the entrance foyer was remodelled with a new box office, cloakroom, digital signage and new heat-efficient front doors.

Grant-making trusts and foundations contributed over two-thirds of the funds raised with significant generous donations from the Monument Trust (part of the Sainsbury Family Trusts), the Wolfson Foundation, The Garfield Weston Foundation, The Foyle Foundation and The JP Getty Jr Charitable Trust. Twenty-one further local trusts were also supportive.

Funds were also raised from the corporate sector, including donations at events and dinners, totallin

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USA - ANSI E1.35 - 2007, Standard for Lens Quality Measurements for Pattern Projecting Luminaires Intended for Entertainment Use, is being revised to increase the accuracy of the measurement procedure, while keeping it simple. The draft of the revised standard is available for free download and comment through 21 January 2013 at the web address below.

E1.35 describes a method for measuring and stating the sharpness of the image projected by a stage and studio luminaire. It's meant to be a simple way to distinguish quantitatively between luminaires as to the crispness of their projected images.

For more information, please contact Karl Ruling, PLASA's Technical Standards Manager, at karl.ruling@plasa.org

(Claire Beeson)

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USA - Two draft Rigging Working Group standards related to the use of chain hoists in the entertainment industry are available for free download and comment at the web address below through 28 January 2013. Materially affected members of the public are invited to review them.

BSR E1.6-2 - 201x, Entertainment Technology - Design, Inspection, and Maintenance of Electric Chain Hoists for the Entertainment Industry, is part of the E1.6 powered entertainment rigging project. This draft standard covers the design, inspection, and maintenance of serially manufactured electric link chain hoists having capacity of 2 tons or less and used in the entertainment industry. This standard does not cover attachment to the load or to the overhead structure.

BSR E1.6-4 - 201x, Portable Control of Fixed-Speed Electric Chain Hoists in the Entertainment Industry, is a standard for the controls ofte

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UK - NFL fever descended on London once again this October, with the annual Wembley showdown this year playing host to American Football's St Louis Rams and New England Patriots. For the sixth year in succession, London-based Integrated Security Consultants (ISC) was called upon to ensure the complete safety and security of the visit. The company demonstrated its breadth of capabilities, managing a complex close protection operation for cheerleaders of both teams, NFL officials and VIPs. ISC also provided event security management for a large fan rally held in Trafalgar Square before the match.

The fan rally, which ran from 10am to 5pm the day before the main game, attracted an estimated 10,000 fans and saw cheerleading performances by both teams as well as the cheerleaders of the Jacksonville Jaguars, who will be playing 'home' games at Wembley from 2013-16. Other entertainment

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UK - With only four stands remaining, exhibitors need to act now to secure a presence at the fifth annual PLASA Focus: Leeds 2013, taking place at the Royal Armouries, on Tuesday 30 April and Wednesday 1 May 2013.

Following record attendance in 2012, the premier entertainment technology trade show in the North has attracted even more companies that are keen to access the 50% of visitors who do not attend any other trade show during the year.

Mark Priestley, project manager at Unusual Rigging explains the rationale behind their decision to book for the first time: "Although a committed supporter of PLASA, 2013 will see Unusual Rigging making its exhibitor debut at PLASA Focus. We have completed a lot of projects in the north of England and Scotland but we believe we will be able to introduce our range of services to new customers at Leeds. When we visited the show last yea

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UK - Le Mark enjoyed a busy evening at the 2012 Hunts Post Business Awards. Winning every award they were nominated for, the Le Mark team bought home a trio of prestigious honours.

Sales director Linda Gibbons said, "It was a huge surprise and such an amazing achievement to win three individual awards. The Le Mark team have worked so hard this year with some amazing achievements, from supplying the 2012 London games with our portable flooring to amazing second-year results with our new Dirty Rigger range of tool pouches and rigger gloves. I'm incredibly proud and grateful to all of them."

Managing director Stuart Gibbons also commented, "What a way to mark 30 years in business - playing a vital role in the Olympics opening ceremony, gaining new distribution deals throughout the year and across the globe for our MagTape professional gaffer tapes & Dirty Rigger ra

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New Zealand - Mojo Barriers supplied one of 2012's most hotly anticipated film premieres, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey held in Wellington, New Zealand, 28 November 2012.

Wearing elf ears and wizard hats, an estimated 100,000 fans waited patiently to greet their favourite stars including Cate Blanchett and Elijah Woods, who have both reprised their roles from Lord of the Rings.

Mojo Barriers worked with clients director Sir Peter Jackson's production company, 3 Foot 7 and Wellington City Council to install over 600m of barrier along the entire length of the red carpet which lined the city streets.

The barriers allowed fans to view and talk to the celebrities in complete safety as they made their way to the Embassy Theatre where the premiere took place. The carefully-designed configuration featured access gates to allow cast and crew cross over locations and

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UK - The entire crew from the much-anticipated reunion tour by The Stone Roses took time out during rehearsals at LS-Live to complete their Event Safety Passport (SPA) certificate at the industry training centre on site, Backstage Academy.

Ahead of their shows in Manchester, production manager Tony Gittins wanted the crew to be up to speed with the latest health and safety considerations whilst working on a live event.

He booked all the crew onto the one-day course at the Academy, which is based at the LS-Live rehearsal studios in South Kirkby, West Yorkshire.

He said, "For the larger tours I do, I always send all the crew to do their Event Safety Passport because it raises their awareness of health and safety when they are working around the set.

"When we booked the production rehearsals for The Stone Roses at LS-Live, I was pleased to learn that the facility no

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UK - A.C. Special Projects (ACSP) have supplied and installed two flown trussing grids complete with motors and control, a winch bar, 120 channels of dimming, DMX buffers and a new cabling management and infrastructure to Theatre on The Hill, Amersham & Wycombe College's (AWC) busy performance and training facility in Buckinghamshire, UK.

Producing a range of shows, awards ceremonies and events, the 120 seat theatre is a fully equipped space with a flexible format, used by students on the Performing Arts and Technical Theatre courses.

Based only a few miles away, AWC contacted ACSP when looking for a wheelchair-friendly, flexible and safe method for their students to work on rigging technical production equipment at ground level.

The project was led for ACSP by project manager, Lance Bromhead, who worked closely with AWC's theatre technician, Jake Edmonds to provide a cost e

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UK - Arena Group has appointed Niall Gaffney as general manager of Arena Seating, based at the seating office in Membury.

Gaffney joins Arena bringing with him more than 20 years specialist experience in the temporary seating installation and engineering industry with project responsibilities including The Open Golf Championship and Cheltenham Guinness stand. Qualified as a Chartered Structural Engineer, Gaffney was managing director and owner of Seating Contracts for 11 years, which then became a part of SGB Eventlink.

Brought in to help develop and manage the significant growth Arena Seating is experiencing following a £6m investment into 50,000 state of the art Clearview seats, he will be utilising his knowledge and understanding for the industry to implement and oversee a range of innovative solutions to new and existing clients.

Gaffney comments, "This year A

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UK - The Stage Technologies UK rentals team was contracted by production Manager Matt Towell to provide a 50-axis automation and control system for the new West End musical The BodyGuard. The system comprised equipment for performer flying and movement of scenic pieces including a rotating cabin and a huge mansion wall, and hydraulic scissor lifts by sister company Delstar Engineering.

Based on Lawrence Kasdan's 1992 film and directed by Thea Sharrock, the show opened in London's Adelphi Theatre on 5 December 2012. In addition to the thriller storyline taken from the film, the show features dazzling musical scenes featuring songs from the Whitney Houston catalogue. Designer Tim Hatley references the show's cinematic roots with a "filmic" set in which scenes glide from one to the next through the use of a huge camera-like shutter.

Automation is present in every

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Germany - The demands on modern conference and training rooms have changed completely over the past few years. Even in small rooms we expect a perfectly working media integration these days. For instance, the room should automatically go to standby on time with the beginning of the seminar or the meeting, turn on the beamer lamp, depending on the resource booking, wake up the amplifier, the mixing desk and other devices from standby mode and adjust the illumination.

In the best case the same steps should be carried out again in the reverse order at the end of the event. Especially in view of today's energy debates, saving energy by automated standby activation is becoming more and more important.

So far, all this could only be realised by means of very expensive and extremely complex media control systems. With the Cardinal DVM 194 series Sommer Cable will present a new, very

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UK - Production Resource Group is continuing its relationship with producer Michael Rose Limited. MRL's general Manager, Dave McNeilly contacted PRG back in the summer of 2011 with regards to PRG providing them with a temporary flying system for the production of Aladdin at a purpose built theatre at the London Piazza in the O2 Arena. PRG supplied a custom Flying System, rigging and lighting for the production.

The theatre structure consists of a ground support tower supplied by Star Events and positioned over the stage with an arena tented structure forming the auditorium and connected to the ground support.

PRG designed and installed a 44 x bar Flying System into a Star Events ground support structure, this was managed by PRG's senior account manager, Jay Call. It was 20m high and designed to mimic a theatre fly tower. The system is almost entirely automated using bot

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UK - Scene transitions as Snow White flees the evil clutches of the Wicked Queen are smoother than ever at Portsmouth's Kings Theatre this Christmas thanks to Triple E's pioneering SDRIVE system.

Magical track solutions specialist Triple E launched the SDRIVE motorised curtain track system - a simple, lightweight, 'plug and play' motor for ERAIL - in the wonderland surroundings of the Kings Theatre in September and generously donated the first SDRIVE off the production line to the historical theatre as part of the restoration efforts.

"With Snow White keen to keep up her pace to escape the Wicked Queen, we knew the SDRIVE system would be a great help," says Triple E's managing director David Edelstein. "SDRIVE is fast, practically silent, and almost invisible - a winning combination that every heroine needs to survive. As she moves from scene to scene, SDRIVE en

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UK - Automation specialist Kinesys is launching LibraWATCH, a new free multi-platform load-monitoring software app which works with Windows, Mac, iOS and Android operating systems.

LibraWATCH is the latest in the innovative Libra range of products by Kinesys and integrates seamlessly with LibraCELL, LibraPRO and LibraWIFI.

With smartphones and tablets an increasingly popular everyday tool for technicians, riggers and touring crews in the entertainment industry, Kinesys has developed this new, user-friendly and robust load-monitoring experience specifically for all professionals who are working 'on-the-go' with rigged installations.

LibraWATCH offers a fully flexible and fully mobile solution designed so load information can be viewed quickly and clearly via a wired network or through a LibraWIFI wireless connection on multiple portable and hand-held devices.

Once installed

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Switzerland - At the end of August, the Saint-Prex Classics took place for the seventh time in the medieval village of Saint-Prex, in French Switzerland. For the first time Gerriets was involved in the event and helped to make sure that that the many international artists from the fields of opera, ballet and chamber music had a very special outdoor venue.

For the Fondation Saint-Prex Classics, Gerriets collaborated with the architect Dieter Dietz from EPFL Lausanne. Gerriets produced a four-piece, fire-resistant motorised outer shell made of high-strength, transparent PVC Polyglass covering an area of about 355sq.m. In addition, a roof membrane from 750 g/sq.m heavy PVC was supplied (21.80 m x 11.20 m).

Gerriets also provided a 200m long, three-dimensionally curved JOKER95 track with several FRICTION-DRIVE motors. The construction was designed to withstand wind loads of up to

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UK - A.C. Entertainment Technologies (AC-ET) have restructured their specialist Rigging division into separate Sales and Servicing departments, and are in the process of expanding their rigging sales team in response to increasing customer needs.

Under the new restructure, AC-ET's UK sales director, Jonathan Walters is now heading up the Rigging Sales department. Rigging sales executive, Matthew Millward is supporting Jonathan in the day-to-day running of the department, as well as dealing with sales enquiries, quotations and demonstrations.

In addition, AC-ET are currently recruiting for another rigging sales executive for their Leeds office.

Tracie Young has moved into the new role of rigging services manager, where she is now overseeing the in-house specialist Rigging Services department - including their vast quantity of popular spare parts in stock for CM and other bran

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UK / Venezuela - Wisbech UK based 5 Star Cases has supplied a substantial quantity of cases to OB specialists Megahertz.

The cases form part of a shipment of eight vehicles that have been dispatched from Ely, Cambridgeshire based Megahertz to South American broadcaster, Vision Venezuela (ViVe), a government owned cultural broadcasting organisation.

The project comprised two complete Mercedes 2532 OB trucks and two 2532 Tender vehicles which carry all the flightcases containing the 'loose' gear, plus four further vehicles, two for satellite news gathering and two for production - all built on Toyota Land cruiser bases.

Megahertz has been using 5 Star for at least the last 10 years for its case requirements. Megahertz Production Manager, Bill O'Flynn comments, "5 Star are excellent, always reliable, the products are well made and quality engineered while the turnarounds a

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UK - Cinimod Studio in conjunction with Prolyte Group's Special Projects Division, Litestructures, have delivered the most epic of public lighting installations to mark the highly anticipated launch of the Halo 4 Xbox 360 game.

Agency AKQA (acting on behalf of Microsoft/Xbox) commissioned Cinimod Studio to create this spectacular illuminated structure - based on the Halo 4 Glyph symbol - which would be one of the largest and brightest man-made structures to ever fly over a capital city.

Cinimod Studio turned to Litestructures to help bring their concept to life. The solution drew on Litestructures' experience of creating 'impossible' structures using aluminium components. To fulfil the brief, a selection of proprietary products from the Prolyte range were specified, including the main structure frame created from a combination of S36R truss straights and custom corners. The in

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USA - Improving safety conditions for technical staff members has always been a primary goal at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. When timing and budgets came together after the annual production of A Christmas Carol opened in November 2012, they called Sapsis Rigging, Inc.

Sapsis installed fall arrest equipment in both performance spaces at the Goodman - the 856-seat Albert Ivar Goodman Theatre's proscenium stage, and the flexible thrust-style stage in the (maximum) 450-seat Owen Bruner Goodman Theatre.

Daniel Porter, one of the ETCP-certified rigging professionals on the Sapsis staff, supervised the entire installation. He and his crew placed eight ProPlus horizontal lifelines on the Albert's catwalk, balcony rail, and loading bridge, as well as 36 ProPlus self-retracting lifelines (SRLs). These SRLs feature a dual inertia braking system, which stops a fall with minimal

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UK - ExCeL London has signed a new five-year contract with Blitz Communications as its partner of choice for the provision of AV & staging services.

Blitz is now the sole onsite preferred supplier for audio, video, lighting and staging across all event spaces at ExCeL. These include ICC London, the UK's largest fully-flexible- 5,000 seated auditorium; Capital Hall, London's largest banqueting hall seating up to 3,000 guests; the 87,328m2 multi-purpose Event Halls; the 45 Gallery Meeting Rooms; the self-contained Platinum Suite; and the Capital Suite comprising 17 individual meeting rooms.

Blitz first partnered with ExCeL in 2005 and this will now be the third time the parties have signed services contracts. The new agreement has come about in response to the ongoing business development at ExCeL, particularly following the successful launch of the ICC facilities in 2010. The v

  1. Backstage Academy new year courses
  2. Unusual nominated for Favourite Rigging Company
  3. Star Events see in the New Year
  4. LTM Motor School returns for 2013
  5. Prolyte training with DWR
  6. Arena Group raise profile with Arena Deck
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