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Compulite Vector Red

Compulite Vector Red

Compulite is an Israeli-based lighting console manufacturer that has been in business for over 25 years. During the last few years, the company has expanded its range to include several new models. The Compulite Vector now comes in four models that vary according to how many faders and DMX512 outputs you need for your purposes.  The company also manufactures programming wings and playback wings that can be used with an outboard PC. The playback wing can be used in conjunction with any model to add an additional 10 faders and cue keys. We had an opportunity to Road Test the Vector Red.

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Doing the Road Her Way

Audra Breyer integrates the "boy's club."

Audra Breyer is a Jill-of-all-trades, who just happens to be the master of integration on John Mayer’s current tour. We caught up with her long enough to find out what it’s like being a woman in a boy’s club, how she got to be where she is today and the thing she likes least about our industry.

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Calling the Show

Mark Dobrow makes Mary Poppins fly.  

When you have a musical show that encompasses whirlwind set and costume changes, magic tricks, a flying nanny, seven floors of dressing rooms, hundreds of lighting, sound and automation cues, nearly 50 crew members and a 40,000-pound house set that moves and breaks apart, not to mention requiring four assistant stage managers to run it, you call on a production stage manager who really knows what they’re doing. A highly experienced Broadway and touring veteran, Mark Dobrow rises to the major challenge of running Disney’s hit show Mary Poppins each and every night. His love for his work and relaxed demeanor undoubtedly make him a sea of calm in a turbulent backstage environment where somebody or something is always in motion.

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2007 Parnelli Lifetime Achievement Honoree Gerry Stickells

Production and Tour Manager for Jimi Hendrix, Queen, Pioneered the Tour Manager Position with Clear Head, Cool Hand

Stickells was one of the early innovating production managers and influenced the whole shape of gigging in the early years,” states Brian Croft, recipient of the first Parnelli Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001. “He famously dealt with any logistic problems with great confidence and is admired by everyone he does business with to this day.”

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Alice Cooper’s Solid Rock Foundation to Build Teen Center

Industry called on to help create music center, vocational school for disadvantaged youth in Phoenix — and beyond. 

Alice Cooper’s Solid Rock Foundation (SRF), a Christian nonprofit Arizona Corporation he formed with Chuck Savale in 1995 dedicated to teenagers and children in need, has long held popular events like the Christmas Pudding Concerts and celebrity golf tournaments to raise money and awareness for their cause. Now they announce their most ambitious goal yet: a 29,000-square-foot center where troubled youth can learn everything about the music industry, including what it takes to run a concert tour. 

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The Golden Egg

Nikola Tesla was down on his luck. It was 1886, and he had just lost his own company, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing, to his financial backers who believed that Tesla’s ideas were impractical. He had no money, and he was forced to work as a manual laborer to put food on the table and have a place to live.

Tesla was one of the most brilliant inventors of all time. Before he walked off his job working for Thomas Edison, and before he started his own company and lost it to his investors, he conceived an idea for building an AC induction motor. At the time, there was no such thing.  

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The Golden Egg

Nikola Tesla was down on his luck. It was 1886, and he had just lost his own company, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing, to his financial backers who believed that Tesla’s ideas were impractical. He had no money, and he was forced to work as a manual laborer to put food on the table and have a place to live.

Tesla was one of the most brilliant inventors of all time. Before he walked off his job working for Thomas Edison, and before he started his own company and lost it to his investors, he conceived an idea for building an AC induction motor. At the time, there was no such thing.  

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Tracking Made Easy

There are many concepts and principles every automated lighting programmer should know. The most important is probably the principle of “tracking.” It is actually a very simple concept, yet is often the most difficult to teach and learn. However, once tracking is understood, its impor-tance to automated lighting data becomes clear.

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E-mail Me

I’m convinced that, should we all disappear under a radioactive mushroom cloud, the only things that will survive are cockroaches and spam. And I’m not entirely sure about the cockroaches.

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Fashionable FX

The Fourth of July just passed, which is Christmas and New Year’s all rolled together for the pyro industry. But no sooner have the last em-bers of a glory star fallen to the ground, than the live special effects business starts figuring out how to make an even more complex magic act foolproof enough for Bon Jovi and Pfizer.

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Backstage Graduates

Different paths lead to promising technical theatre careers.

In the live event production industry, many succeses are earned in the school of street smarts. You’ve heard the awe-inspiring story just about a million times. Well, here it is again — a million and one. A budding technical star moves to the Big Apple or Hollywood with nothing more than raw talent, a wad of cash saved from a low-wage job in “Nowheresville” and a lifelong dream to design for a large-scale, high-profile production. He or she takes a chance, hoping to become the next best thing in the world of glitzy lights.

Other aspiring talents, however, choose a different direction to reach the big time. From Hollywood to Broadway, many successful designers and technicians are also graduates of production schools. While they still have to pay their dues in the real world like everyone else, graduates consider the extra education and experience showcased on their portfolio as a leg up over the competition.

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