OUAGADOUGOU, Burkino Faso, Africa – PR Lighting fixtures reach some parts of the globe that other brands do not. One of the more obscure locations is Burkina Faso, the tiny landlocked country in West Africa. From there, sound engineer Henri Damien runs the successful pro-audio importation and technical supply company Datalinks, from his base in the capital, Ouagadougou.
Read More »
PRETORIA, South Africa- Event Lighting is a new rental and production company near Pretoria, South Africa, offering lighting equipment and design services. It was founded by Peter Rieck of Rieck’s Lighting and Henry Jenkins of Eventech. The joint venture has started with an investment in Robe fixtures including 12 Robe Pointes and 24 Spikie fixtures, Robe’s new small, super-fast LED WashBeams. The company also has an inventory of LED PAR cans. They sourced the fixtures through DWR Distribution.
Read More »
Scenic design is a theatrical discipline requiring a delicate balance of vision, intelligence and a willingness to serve the narrative without overwhelming it. Tony Award-winning scenic designer Beowulf Boritt zeroes in on what’s most important: the tale being told. “What it looks like is less important to me than what it means,” Boritt tells PLSN. “Obviously, what it looks like is important — that’s what I’m doing, putting visuals on stage — but trying to make those visuals meaningful and relate to the story and scenes and not get in the way of story and scene is really the most important thing.”
Read More »
Music fans hungry to see Drake and Future perform their hits this year are being given a gourmet experience on the “Summer Sixteen” tour, which extends into autumn with the help from a mind-blowing production design by LD Guy Pavelo and tour director Steve Kidd of GP-SK Design & Production. With support from PRG, PRG/Nocturne, SGPS and Pyrotek, “Summer Sixteen” hit the road in July with 143 DMX universes, a whopping 27 trucks and 200,000 pounds of gear. PLSN caught up with Guy Pavelo to discuss exactly how he and his team have raised the bar with this production.
Read More »
Production Designer Yves Aucoin Designs a Fresh New Look for Celine’s First Major Tour in Seven Years
Celine Dion just finished up her first string of touring dates since 2008/09, and designer Yves Aucoin couldn’t have been happier with this show. The production designer for the set, lights and video has been with the artist since 1989, illuminating her for the last 27 years. But up until this last summer, all of her recent shows have taken place at the Showroom at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas since March of 2011, when she first started her much-heralded second residency.
Read More »
Designing Radiohead’s current tour is longtime visual designer and director Andi Watson, who says the design was a response to the band’s latest album with the knowledge that they wanted a single production design that would work in all the venues they were playing.
Read More »
PLSN spoke with production and lighting designer Butch Allen of Blame Funnel Creative about his work on Carrie Underwood’s arena tour earlier this year, in support of her Oct. 2015 Storyteller album. The tour sold out arenas around the country. Allen’s previous clients have included Eric Church, Metallica, Usher, Paramore and Van Halen, to name just a few. Allen spoke about working with the tour’s creative director Barry Lather, the production team and putting together Carrie’s first in-the-round tour.
Read More »
After 19 years, the renowned country music artist Garth Brook knew that his return to New York City needed to be on a stage worth the wait. Having played in Central Park to nearly a million people in 1997, Brooks this summer took the field, literally, at Yankee Stadium in mid-July, becoming the first country music act to play the iconic Bronx ballpark. Joined by his wife and fellow country music star Trisha Yearwood, the massive stage design suited the epic scope of the venue, the event, and the artist himself.
Read More »
The Production Designer Turns to Upstaging for Set, Lighting and Video for Weezer’s Co-Headlining Tour with Panic! At the Disco
Production Designer Robb Jibson was in a quandary at the start of the summer. He had a design for a Weezer tour in place with all of his production elements: the set, lighting and video. But he was short on time and stuck with a budget. Even so, if there’s one thing Robb is good at, it’s accumulating friends in his home in the Midwest. So with paperwork and a glimpse of a plan, he hopped on his vintage Italian scooter and trekked out from his Chicago home to the cornfields outside of town. More specifically, to the Upstaging shop in Sycamore, IL.
Read More »
The Country Artist Kicks Off an Epic Weekend of Music and Sports at Bristol Motor Speedway
Kenny Chesney’s 2016 “Spread the Love” tour officially ended the last week of August as this country artist normally does, with a couple of sold out shows at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, MA. The “No Shoes Nation” showed up in full force for a six-hour show that lasted late, bypassing the curfew that was extended by the local authorities to allow the artist all the time he wanted to perform.
Read More »
Ever since Bob Dylan “plugged in” at The Newport Folk Festival in 1965, the annual music event has been synonymous with both music tradition and innovation. Although Dylan once jokingly referred to the electrified style he helped to pioneer as “Folk rot,” roots or Americana music hasn’t disintegrated in the last 50-plus years. Instead, it has fused somewhat with rock and other genres to create a hybrid beast.
Read More »
What better place to stage the first North American production of a play about William Shakespeare than at the continent’s longest running Shakespeare festival? This was the thinking behind the Stratford Festival’s summer 2016 production of Shakespeare in Love, the glorious romp that brings the 1998 Oscar-winning film of the same name to the stage. Produced in Stratford, Ontario, by special arrangement with The Walt Disney Company and Sonia Friedman Productions, the show’s script, set and costume designs come directly from the Noel Coward Theatre in London’s West End, where it debuted in June 2014.
Read More »