Free lighting workshops - Old Mill Theatre - March 18, 20 and 22

The Old Mill Theatre is running FREE lighting workshops on March 18, 20 and 22 from 7pm to 10pm each night. They will be facilitated by Don Allen in association Noel O’Neill, director of No Bed of Roses, currently in rehearsal. Don is a well-known lighting professional and has run many similar workshops. To register your interest, email oldmilltheatre@iinet.net.au. There is a limit of 20 participants. People can choose to come on a night that suits them, as you may only be interested in one aspect or cannot get to the other two nights. After covering safety and basic stage lighting principles, the lighting design requirements for No Bed Of Roses will be discussed. A lighting plan will be created, along with associated paperwork such as a dimmer channel and patch sheet. Then the lights will be rigged, focused and plotted. Some of the lighting will be preset for the continuity of the workshops because there is not time to start from scratch (as a guide to rigging, 30 minutes per light is needed to rig and focus. More than 30 lights will be used so there is not time to do it all). The workshops include the following areas of stage lighting split over three nights with some overlap: stage safety, rigging safety, objectives of stage lighting, properties of light, electrical safety, basic lantern types, lighting angles, lighting desks (programming and use), power usage (watts), dimmer control, patching and cables, rigging a show, colours, special effects, basic stage lighting design, lighting plans, documentation, script analysis, square one rig, technical rehearsals and desk plotting, and focusing. All participants will receive a set of notes on a CD-ROM (to save trees). Please wear enclosed shoes. If you want to do some pre-reading, look at: Stage Lighting Design 101 by Bill Williams http://www.mts.net/~william5/sld.htm. Go to this site for data on Strand Lighting which is a lot of the old lighting still found in community theatres: http://www.strandarchive.co.uk/lanterns/index.html (the Old Mill has Coda4 cyc lights). This is the Selecon site for their data sheets and details on the Acclaim Axial zoom profiles the Old Mill uses: http://www.seleconlight.com/ The ALIA Lighting Links page maintained by Andy Cidor is a good starting point because it provides links to all areas of theatre lighting: http://www.alia.com.au/links/index.html. The LSC Maxim is an ideal lighting desk (the Old Mill has a maXimM desk): http://www.lsclighting.com/products/consoles/maxim-console.