One of Tasmania’s leading lighting designers, Gareth Kays, used an ultra-compact Quartz console from British manufacturer Avolites to programme the magical lighting and special effects on the state’s production of blockbuster Broadway musical Wicked. The show ran at Hobart’s Theatre Royal from 27 January to 11 February.
Featuring spectacular staging and a 17-piece orchestra, the musical was put on by local production company The Show Company. Kays was brought in to design and programme the entire lighting package. The owner of GK Productions, Kays controlled the show using an ultra-compact Avolites Quartz console running the latest Titan V10 software.
“There were a number of reasons that the Quartz console appealed to me,” explains Kays, who had invested in the console in 2016 from Australian distributor TLC Global. “Firstly, it doesn’t need to run on a laptop, which avoids Windows doing unwanted updates. It was super compact, but still had the full capabilities of Titan, and it was a lot quicker and neater than my existing set-up – which had a mountain of interconnecting cables. One of the great advantages of the Quartz is that it is available at a realistic price point for a fully featured professional console.”
For the Wicked production, Kays added an additional touch screen and the Avolites Titan Mobile Wing during the design and programming stages of the show.
“Adding the Titan Mobile Wing and touch-screen gave me more ‘real estate’ during the programming of the show,” he explains. “However, the Quartz’s well designed, full-functionality meant that I could disconnect these when I moved to my operating position. I then used my remaining faders for a few ‘on the fly’ specials, some basic FOH washes for curtain calls and an array of fog machines located around the stage.”
www.avolites.com
Australian Distributor: TLC Global www.tlcglobal.com.au
