USA - Located in Houston, Texas, the Alley Theatre is a nationally recognized performing arts company that creates a wide range of innovative productions. Recently undergoing a $46.5m renovation which included improvements to the Hubbard Theatre, associate director for design Kevin Rigdon was asked to also serve as the principal designer for the project.

Working with theatrical consultants Bill Connor & Associates as well as Philips Strand Lighting aauthorized dealer StageLight, Rigdon was tasked with creating a more intimate relationship between the audience and the actors on stage,

USA - American alternative rock band X Ambassadors are touring North America through March on their VHS tour using a fully MIDI-triggered lighting rig designed by Cour Design that includes Elation Professional SixPar 200 LED PAR colour changers and Platinum Beam 5R beam lights.

Cour Design handles production design, lighting programming and production coordination on the tour, their first time working with the band. "We met with their management team when we first started our business," stated Gordon Droitcour, co-founder and designer along with Erik Anderson at the Nashvil

UK - Flashlight Ltd has announced it has been experiencing high demand and great feedback from customers on the ARRI Skypanel range since it started shipping in September. Both the Manchester and London offices are reporting extensive sales to broadcasters, rental companies and studios. With over 200 units sold so far the team are adding to their unprecedented numbers of ARRI LED L-Series sold.

Flashlight's Andy Dodd says: 'It has been phenomenal so far, although not surprising as it is a fantastic product. The technical aspects of the product, with its competitive price point is mak

USA - VER, the global provider of production equipment and engineering support, announced that it has acquired the business of DPS Inc., a production services company. In a sale ordered by the bankruptcy court, VER acquired more than half of the company's lighting and film equipment, nearly all of its audio, video, and rigging equipment, its 70,000sq.ft facility near Burbank, CA and retained nearly half of the company's employees.

VER is already consolidating its rapidly growing, industry-recognized lighting division at DPS's former location. The new VER Light Lab is being expanded t

UK - Taking place as part of the London International Mime Festival, Tipping Point is the latest production from renowned theatre company Ockham's Razor and features five acrobatic performers using simple metal poles to create an unforgettable theatrical experience. It is currently running at the Platform Theatre, London, and has already achieved critical acclaim. With its strong reputation as the leading theatrical lighting supplier, WL is providing the equipment for this ground-breaking show.

Tipping Point is a co-commission by the London International Mime Festival a

Poland - Lighting designer Michal Dobek has created a mind-bending light show featuring over a hundred Clay Paky fixtures on the 16th edition of one of Poland's biggest techno music events, Mayday festival.

Taking place across the three levels of Katowice's Spodek Arena, Dobek employed 72 Clay Paky Sharpys and 32 Alpha Spot QWO 800 to shoot intense aerial effects over the audience at the event's main stage. The festival lighting system was supplied by TSE, with the main stage operated by Dobek, Waldemar Osentowski and Marcin Kalu?ynski.

"The Sharpy is the ideal fixture for el

Germany - An array of Clay Paky Mythos and Sharpy Wash 330 fixtures have been recreated in minute model form at Miniatur Wunderland's latest attraction - an exact functioning replica of German pop superstar Helene Fischer's sold-out concert at the Berlin Olympiastadion in July 2015.

The model features the real life audiovisual elements and detail of the open-air performance, including the lighting rig used for the original full-scale design by Patrick Woodroffe and Andreas Kisters. The build, led by project manager Sven Hinzmann and a highly skilled team of around 40 Miniatur Wunderl

Germany - Traditionally, in Berlin the New Year is greeted at the Brandenburg Gate. Once again, TLT Event AG was in charge of production and technical implementation.

The turn of the year was also the go-ahead for TLT to invest in a RockLink system. On New Year's Eve it came into operation for the first time in order to provide a redundant fibreoptic network for the MA-Net between FOH and Dimmercity.

"As we are placing great value on reliability for our productions, we have been working with Rock Solid Technologies' RockSwitch Mk2 for some time. Moreover, there was an increas

USA - Chauvet Professional has unveiled the first of the next generation of products in its popular COLORdash LED series: the COLORdash S-Par 1.

An IP65-rated RGBA wash fixture, the COLORdash S-Par 1 marks a major advance in LED color blending, because its 27 red, green, blue and amber LEDs appear, not as individual pixels, but as one large homogenized light source. This breakthrough eliminates the "color separation" that typically occurs during LED mixing, producing a blended palette of colours, each appearing as a single emulsified hue directly from the lens.

Along wit

Belgium - ArKaos has produced an effective new accessory which instantly integrates the latest version of its GrandVJ software with one of the industry's most popular MIDI controllers, the Akai APC40 mkII.

The new GrandVJ Cover is a durable plastic overlay, which fits the face of the Akai APC40 mkII controller precisely. All the GrandVJ 2.1 features from the pre-installed MIDI template for the controller are clearly printed on the cover. The illuminated Akai control buttons remain clearly visible through special transparent sections of the cover. "With glow-in-the dark elements

Germany - Motörhead blasted off in the 1970s and rocked gloriously loudly for the next 40 years until their last live gig in Berlin on 11December 2015.

The band officially ended on 28 December 2015, two and a half weeks after that memorable show in Berlin, and part way through the Bad Magic tour with the passing of founder, lead singer and rock 'n' roll warrior Lemmy (Ian Fraser Kilmister) aged 70.

The Bad Magic tour was supporting their 22nd studio album - for which lighting designer Caio Bertti sculpted a classic rock 'n' roll look with the contemporary twist of moving lights f

UK - Rock band Skindred are known for their lively and energetic live performances as well as their music which is an eclectic fusion of heavy metal, punk rock, hip-hop, electronica and reggae - and so the pressure is always on lighting designer Jordon Cooper to come up with a few surprises and touches of the unexpected.

This design for the current Volume tour is diverse, different and practical to stage in different sized venues. It was also one of the first to feature Robe's new LED ColorStrobe, together with several other Robe fixtures including MMX Spots LEDWash 600s and CycFX8s

UK - Following a year which saw White Light expand both its expertise and resources, the company is now launching a new platform from which its extensive range of lighting, audio, rigging and video equipment will all be available to purchase: ShopWL.

The site, www.ShopWL.com is now live and has more than 5,000 products available for purchase, with more than 1,000 of these ready for next-day delivery. The site will offer every type of entertainment technology from state-of-the-art lighting and loudspeakers to the essential consumables such as batteries and tape.

Peter Threadgold, W

UK - Over 65 years after its first production, the popularity of musical Guys and Dolls is as great as ever. The success of the 2014/15 Chichester Festival Theatre production has seen it transfer to the West End, with a tour to follow. Stage Electrics has worked closely with lighting designer Tim Mitchell to help make the transition.

Produced by Runaway Entertainment, the show has just started an eight week run at London's Savoy Theatre, after which it tours 18 UK and Irish cities through to the end of July. As an associate artist at Chichester Festival Theatre, Tim designed t

Taiwan - In Taibao City, Taiwan, a southern branch of the National Palace Museum has opened, driving cultural, educational, social and economical development to both northern and southern regions of Taiwan. To commemorate its inauguration, Aurora Lighting was called in to overview the design, and local distributor Jackson Yu of DLHG, to offer project support to the job.

A total of 61 fixtures were used, including 20x Fine Art 230 BEAM, 16x Fine Art 1500 Spot, 20x Studio Due City Colour and five PASP 4K SKYBEAM luminaires. Controlling these automated fixtures was an MA2 Full-size and

Spain - Clay Paky Sharpys have one again played an integral role in an epic stunt by trailblazing light artists Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF) and lighting designer Matthew Button, who have combined their creative genius to pull off a sensory spectacular for Lexus Europe and singer will.i.am.

The technological feat, which is part of Lexus's campaign for the Lexus NX SUV, sees will.i.am create a choreographed laser light show in time to his hit #thatPOWER, using a trio of Lexus NXs on a disused Spanish runway lined with 350 motion-sensitive lasers and Sharpys. The number-one art

USA - The Los Angeles Theatre on Broadway and Sixth Street in downtown Los Angeles is especially hot, sweaty and crowded. Today this sumptuous art deco palace built by Charlie Chaplin in 1931 is the location for an episode of TV show Scandal and rehearsals for the camp musical Carrie - The Killer Musical Experience. Chaplin, whose photograph with Albert Einstein adorns the gilded lobby, would be proud that, despite the lack of air conditioning and the crumbling plaster walls, his dream is still alive.

A week before opening night, lighting designer Brian Gale is on stage

South Africa - Three further African countries have embraced the popular singing competition The Voice - South Africa, Angola & Nigeria - with all three series recorded at and broadcast from Stage One, Sasani Studios, Johannesburg - and all featuring over 100 Robe moving lights prominently on their respective lighting rigs.

Johannesburg based production company Multi-Media is co-ordinating and supplying all technical elements - including lighting, sound, video, rigging and staging - for broadcaster AMPN (African Media & Productions Network) TV over an 11-month period which end

Ireland - Dublin's 398ft high Monument of Light Spire was transformed into a giant 'Lightsaber' in December to celebrate the premiere of the new Star Wars film, The Force Awakens, using powerful fixtures controlled by Avolites' Titan One DMX USB Dongle.

Commissioned by Disney, Tom Rohan of event production house Eventco conceptualised the installation alongside lighting designers Mick Murray and Matthew Cregan. The team used 16 of Clay Paky's intensely bright SuperSharpys to beam colours up the Spire to create the Lightsaber effect.

The event lasted for three weeks, with th

USA - Metalcore band Atreyu have a knack for painting pictures with their music. Philadelphia-based LD Lenny Sasso did justice to the group's imagination in his lightshow on their recent tour by drawing on the zone control and pixel mapping features of Chauvet Professional Rogue and Nexus fixtures provided by Squeek Lights.

After working on Atreyu's tour for their sixth and latest studio album Long Live, Sasso described how he went beyond illuminating the stage to reflect the varying moods of the music. "The music of Atreyu can get pretty intense and it evokes powerful im

USA - Behind the scenes at the Emmy-nominated Jimmy Kimmel Live, lighting designer Christian Hibbard is busy bringing the shows musical performances to life. With two outdoor stages that host the hottest musical acts from around the world, Hibbard is asked to create the ideal lighting environment that best personifies the varying musicality of each artist. Understanding these challenges, Hibbard needs lighting instruments with a number of quality capabilities, which he has found in the VL4000 BeamWash luminaire from Philips Vari-Lite.

"I've been at Jimmy Kimmel Liv

The Netherlands - Elation Professional will be showing the latest in its line of versatile, energy-efficient LED and Platinum Series lighting solutions at the ISE show in Amsterdam.

A number of cutting-edge products will be prersented at stand 11-F45, including the powerful and multi award-winning Platinum FLX hybrid moving head while seeing its European debut will be the Platinum HFX, a new mid-sized addition to Elation's hybrid family of beam, spot and wash luminaires. The ACL 360i, a new single beam moving effect luminaire in Elation's ACL Series of high-output narrow-beam LED eff

UK - Blinding Light, the corporate and event lighting specialists, continues to expand with the arrival of account director Loz Wilcox, further strengthening the provision of account and project management support to their customers.

Loz joins Blinding Light from PRG, where he served as head of the UK corporate Eevents and exhibition market. With over twenty years' involvement in the lighting industry, Loz brings a wealth of experience to the Blinding Light team.

"I am really looking forward to working with the team at Blinding Light," comments Loz. "We share a comm

UK - On 21 January 2016, as it welcomed members of the industry to its Embassy Theatre for the annual Association of Lighting Designer's (ALD) New Technology Showcase, The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama was delighted to announce the establishment of the Richard Pilbrow Scholarship.

With special thanks to alumnus and renowned lighting designer Richard Pilbrow for his generosity, the Richard Pilbrow Scholarship will support a young lighting designer at the School as they undertake the training necessary to embark upon their professional career.

Richard Pilbrow is both a gr

Latest Issue. . .