Green Knight

Published Tuesday 26 August 2008 at 10:30

Using Robe and Anolis LED products, lighting designer Lawrence T Doyle claims to have been able to reduce the power consumption needed to run lights for Boxford Masques’ biannual community production by 90 per cent. This year’s performance, Knight & Day, was staged over a week in a natural amphitheatre on the top of Hoar Hill in Boxford, Berkshire. Lawrence, a freelance LD, is also production manager at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury, which produced the event.

He asked Robe UK’s Ian W Brown to help him find a greener solution for lighting the show. The answer was to use 24 Anolis ArcLine Outdoor Optic 12 and 18 strip fixtures and six Robe REDBlinder 296s. The 20-metre wide, 10-metre deep stage and set was designed by Sam Pine, and built in the amphitheatre, which also features heavy natural tree coverage.

This was a special production for 2008, based on a modern adaptation of Charlotte Peake’s magical Edwardian original.

The last production in 2006 had involved more than 100K of tungsten lighting. This year, using the LED units judiciously, that figure was reduced to a simple 6K front of stage wash. The ArcLines were rigged on to the set around the back and sides of the stage and used for general effects and illumination, with some units used specifically for uplighting the tree canopy, all of it becoming visible as daylight, then dusk gave way to night.