The Bama Theatre, Tuscaloosa hosts over 200 shows a year, supported by a flexible lighting rig featuring Chauvet Professional Linas fixtures.
David Jones, the facility’s technical director put together Bama Theatre’s lighting rig from his own fixtures explained: “I have been working at the Bama Theatre in some capacity since I was 15, which is 26 years ago, I started with audio only and in the last 15 years or so I delved more into lighting. I started diverting most of my funds to improving the lighting in the venue. I own all of the audio gear and most of the lighting equipment in the theatre, except for 60 conventional and the sensor rack.”
David’s rig at the theatre includes a myriad of Chauvet Professional fixtures, including: 12 Legend 330SR Spot fixtures, eight COLORado 1 Tri Tour units, four COLORado 1-Tri Tour fixtures and thee Vesuvio foggers. Part of the rig are four SlimPAR Tri 12, four SlimPAR Tri 7 IRC, four SlimPAR 64, 15 SlimPAR 56, six COLORband PiX-M and three SparkliteLED panels from CHAUVET DJ.
Adding to the versatility of the rig, the FOH truss is completely wireless. “The DiFi wireless capability is invaluable when the foggers or other small fixtures are placed inside moving set pieces,” David said. “For our production of Little Mermaid, we built Ursula’s cauldron around a Vesuvio RGBA fogger and with a DiFi unit, and we were able to roll that piece anywhere with just a power umbilical.”
He added: “The resident groups, of which there is about a dozen, know that we can pretty much provide anything they can dream of, the colour conformation among all the different Chauvet fixtures is very tight, so we can create seamless looks even in our more complex productions.”
The plot of Davids lighting rig at the theatre remains the same for nearly all productions he modifies it to create special looks for some shows, by doing things like moving fixtures for side fills or creating a ground row with his COLORband PiX units. “About twice a year, I will position two Legends on the deck to create an up-look that complements the ten units I have hanging above,” he said.
Essential to the variety of looks Jones creates are the four COLORado 1-Tri Tour fixtures in his rig. For most productions, these units are mounted on FOH truss and used for front fill.
David said: “We also rely on the COLORado 1s to give us colour for dances, I’ll have two of them upstage, hitting the cyc about half way up to give contrasting colours against the cyc lights above or I will use them as the same colour to fill in the light fall off from the cyc lights.”
He added: “Former Executive Director Pam Pennick and current Executive Director Sandy Wolfe allowed me to come in and basically live in the venue full time. It is a very symbiotic relationship. They know I love the Bama more than anything and will always take care of it and treat it as my own.”
