ESTA Technical Lifetime Achievement Award for Fisher
- Details
Established in 2017 by the ESTA Board of Directors and Technical Standards Council, the award recognises individuals with ‘significant and sustained’ technical contributions to the entertainment industry over at least 25 years. Last year’s recipient was Robert Goddard of Goddard Design.
Fisher began his career in automation in the late 1980s in Las Vegas with Siegfried and Roy, the first of the mega shows at the first of the Las Vegas mega resorts, The Mirage. From this vantage point at the crest of the wave of huge Las Vegas productions and attractions of the 1990s and 2000s, he got to see what stage automation could be and just how far it had to go to get there.
Fisher has worked in a wide variety of venues and jobs, from rock’n’roll and Broadway touring shows to performer flying to special effects to rigging automation to large scale attraction design and construction, building a knowledge base along the way for what worked and what didn’t. In 1997, he founded Fisher Technical Services (FTSI) with the goal of making a truly integrated automation system specifically for live entertainment shows and attractions of all types.
(Jim Evans)
