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Grahamstown Gets Congo v5
South Africa's Guy Butler Theatre, in the heart of Grahamstown, near the south-eastern coast, plays an important part in the city's National Arts Festival, Africa's largest and most colourful cultural event. With more than 500 shows from opera to cabaret, fine art to craft art, poetry readings to lectures, they needed a desk that was reliable and easy to learn. They settled on an ETC Congo, which they have recently upgraded to v5.
Venue manager at the theatre, Deon Lottering, says: "We purchased the Congo two years ago to replace our ageing desk which had become unstable. We wanted an intelligent desk which would last, and have frequent upgrades. We also needed at least 24 masters or sub masters, as many touring shows need to improvise. Congo was exactly what we were looking for."
The theatre runs on a skeleton staff basis, so the desk needed to be quick to learn and easy to handle. In many cases the lighting technicians only have an hour to learn to operate the control desk, so the improved features of v5, such as its stunning new effects package which makes creating chase, dynamic and content effects a breeze, combined with its simplicity, made it the ideal choice.
Ideally, they wanted a desk from an established company with a dependable service record that could be checked and as the theatre is located in a rural area, they needed a representative nearby. Continues Deon: "We used Dave Whitehouse, an ETC certified contracted trainer at Electro-Quip in Port Elizabeth, and our after sales contact has been excellent. As is always the case with new installations, we experienced some teething difficulties, but everything was covered on the ETC web forum. The online community is fantastic and the blogs and discussion boards cover a comprehensive list of topics. The only real challenge was coordinating the turnaround for getting the studio free around the busy show schedules.
"We are really enjoying using Congo v5. It is remarkable how user friendly it is. Most of the lighting designers and technicians have spent some time on it and have thoroughly benefited from it - sometimes we have to prise them away. All told, we are extremely happy with the results."
The desk is being used for every event at the theatre including the annual South African Schools Festivals and SciFest Africa, the biggest science festival on the African continent, with almost 40,000 visitors each year.
In picture: lighting technicians get familiar with the new Congo v5
6th November 2008
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