Monkey Baa Theatre Company produces high quality theatre programs for young people, their families, teachers and communities throughout Australia and internationally. Established in 1997, the company has achieved critical acclaim for its work and today enjoys a national reputation for producing quality theatre programs for young people.
Monkey Baa has just moved into the Lend Lease Darling Quarter Theatre which is equipped with an ETC Ion lighting control console. When Production and Operations Manager Toby Knyvett needed to specify a console for touring, the natural choice was an ETC Element console.
ETC’s Element console was designed expressly for modest rigs and maximum hands-on fader control. Affordable and easy to use, Element packs in the fundamentals of lighting control. Its small footprint makes it ideal for touring.
“The ETC Eos/Ion/Element family of consoles is definitely offer the best control products for the Australian theatre sector at the moment,” Toby commented. “They are what many theatre venues are moving towards now that the Strand 300 / 500 Series has had its day.”
Designed to handle lighting systems outfitted predominantly with conventional fixtures while accommodating LED fixtures and/or a small number of simple moving lights, the Element console is based on the Eos control system with a simplified feature set similar to the Express console.
There are many features on the Element console that Toby favours in particular the Colour Picker.
“The Colour Picker is fantastic,” he said. “Our theatre is equipped with ETC Selador Vivid-R LED fixtures and the Element’s Colour Picker feature works beautifully with them. You can just say you want Lee 201 or Rosco 45, or alternatively you can dial a colour up on the wheels. It’s very simple.
“I also like that the Park Function is integrated into a menu button in the style of live and blind mode. The Effects Generator on the Element is great too; the ability to use step-based effects but also a linear effects engine is quite useful for us.”
Monkey Baa Theatre Company does a lot of regional touring and Toby reports that the Element is flexible and fast enough to meet the demands of working those venues without restricting the creative options of their designers.
“If the designer wants L104 it doesn’t matter whether the venue has LED’s or conventional wash, the Element makes it simple,” he said. “As more venues invest in LED we can take full advantage of their rig with minimal re-plotting.”
The Lend Lease Darling Quarter Theatre is equipped with a JBL line array system, an ETC Ion control console, ETC Source Four conventional fixtures and ETC Selador LED’s.
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