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Curtain up: grandMA2 Performs at the Edinburgh Fringe
grandMA consoles were in use at two key venues at the 2009 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The Edinburgh International Conference Centre used an grandMA2 light console for their main Pentland auditorium, a 600-1200 capacity flexible space. This hosted two dance shows in rep and several comedy performances including Jimmy Carr and Jason Byrne, during the Fringe Festival.
The console supply was instigated by freelance lighting designer Dave Elcome, who created the production design for most of the shows staged in the venue, and Kenneth Boak, the EICC's technical production manager.
They had never used grandMA before, but the grandMA2 light console came highly recommended by several people as an ideal small to medium theatre and performance control platform. They thought the Festival would provide an ideal proving ground to put the console through its paces. It is also well suited to the plethora of conference events in the various different auditoria, so with future-proofing in mind, and plans for expansion to include a new series of function and live performance spaces, the networkability of the MA control platform is something of real interest.
"The flexibility of being able to control several areas of the building from one console in any room is definitely an asset for a venue like the EICC," says Boak. "This also allows for the backup of other shows/consoles without having to move them around." The grandMA2 light was run in series 2 software for the Fringe shows which included the JK Booking Dance festival, a high energy performance incorporating seven different dance companies from the US.
grandMA2 light features that impressed Elcome include the touch screens which he states are "Far friendlier and easier to use than multiple banks of faders - and they will be even quicker when it comes to moving light operation."
Over in the Music Hall venue within the Assembly Rooms on George Street, another grandMA2 light was in action with a grandMA pico for the duration. The grandMA2 light was specified by Assembly Rooms' head of lighting Paul Lim, and operated primarily by Dave Evans and Steve Sanders, who ran it in ‘series 1' compatibility mode. James Gardner, operator for the world premiere of ‘The Girls of Slender Means' by Steller Quines brought in his own grandMA pico to run lights for that show.
Lim had initially used a grandMA2 in Melbourne and was struck by its dynamics, flexibility and rock-solid stability, and decided it would be good to use when he was appointed for the Edinburgh project. "It's great for busking, and we have to do a lot of that during the Festival! There has been a huge amount of interest in it from other technicians and operators since it's been here," he comments.
For ‘Girls of Slender Means' the grandMA pico console was also used to trigger the QLab sound system via MIDI, giving fully synchronised control of audio via the lighting desk. One of the beauties of the grandMA pico is its cute physical dimensions, which enable it to be squeezed into the miniscule operating spaces that are sometimes left for control in certain Fringe venues.
They used MA's iPhone remote for all the Music Hall between-show focusing which saved huge amounts of time. With just 20 minute changeovers between shows, there was no the time to spare an additional person to operate the desk.
In addition to these consoles, a grandMA light ‘series 1' was used to run lighting on ‘A Midsummer Night's Dream' by The Beijing Film Academy in the McEwan Hall.
photos Louise Stickland
21st August 2009
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