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Cue: September 1979 [Issue 1]
 
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Advert: Berkey Colortran U.K.
For All Your Theatrical Lighting Needs... with Sensational Performance at a Sensible Price.
Advert: CCT Lighting Range
To complement their unique range of lighting equipment CCT offer an exclusive and unparalleled range of Electrosonic dimming and control systems...
Advert: Cue Communications Ltd
What the well-dressed lighting designer is wearing

The AVAB 2001 remote controller is a unique accessory to the AVAB 2001 microcomputer controlled light-board, manufactured in Goteborg, Sweden by AVAB Elektronik AB. 
This device enables the lighting designer to create his lighting programme from anywhere in the theatre, even at the top of a ladder.

Advert: Robert Luff Theatrical Hire
Approved service and spares agents for Rank Strand Electric Limited.
Please apply for price list and details of hire terms. 
Complete sound units for hire or sale.

Advert: Strand Light Palette
Make it any colour you like with the Light Palette - from Strand
Advert: TBA Lighting
Tim Burnham Associates Ltd.
Sales, Equipment Rental, Conferences & Theatre.
Berkey Colortran London main dealer

Advert: Theatre Projects
21 years of service to the theatre
Advert: Thornlite
Thornlite for reputation, reliability and great performance. 
Advert: White Light
Theatre lighting design, control, equipment and hire. 
Audio-Visual presentation, design and projection
Equipment maintenance and refurbishing
Installation, distribution systems, special effects

Appointments
Philip Rose - CCT Theatre Lighting Ltd. 
Jim Douglas - Green Ginger

Between Cues (Walter Plinge)
Publishers of guide books and picture postcards do not, in general, regard old theatres as being part of an architectural heritage. The Balearic Islands are no excep- tion, yet the traditional horse-shoe opera houses in Mahon and Palma are surely as interesting as some of the more obvious show-piece buildings.  
 

British Stage Designers bring home the Golden Triga (John Bury, O.B.E.)
This summer seventeen British theatre designers went to Prague and came home with the Golden Triga! So baffling is this simple statement that it is no wonder that the British press failed to broadcast the good news - for good news it was!
Contracts
Thorn have been awarded a contract by the BBC for their Thornlite 500 systems. These are to be installed at Television Centre, the Cardiff Studios and the Open University. The smaller Thornlite 120 is being supplied to ORF Vienna and Finnish Television. Rank Strand seem to be doing well in America with their Light Palette, another 500 way system, which is going into the Metropolitan Opera and the Kennedy Center in New York. In London the Old Vic has had a Light Palette installed in time for this season. 
Hall Stage Equipment is in the process of installing the stage machinery at hte Barbican Theatre. The design specification is by Theatre Projects. 

Contracts - Talk of the Country
A rather different construction project is nearing completion at Frimley Green in Surrey. Bob Porter's Lakeside Club which was burnt down last November is scheduled to be in operation again in October only twenty weeks after the foundations were laid. The original club was voted "Club of the Year" in 1976, 1977 and 1978 but the new building, costing over £2m, promises to be better than ever. It is being equipped for T.V. use and trade shows. The budget for sound and lighting equipment is believed to be over £80,000. Cosby Controls of New Malden are the lighting and sound con- sultants and Frederick Bird Associates the architects. 
 

Give to Forms and Images a Breath (Adrian Dightam)
"The lighting throughout the evening was exemplary. I do not know how LCDT achieves this, but I wish that every other ballet and dance company in Britain would go and study the subleties and beauties of light in shaping bodies in movement which seem commonplace with LCDT." - Clement Crisp, Financial Times, 17 May 1979

Although that fabulous review says nothing about the technical side of our operation, it does convey exactly what we are striving for in the lighting of LCDT. 

Instantaneous Costume Transformation
In Summer 1976, Tabs published a translation by Christopher Baugh of a chapter from Moyney's treatise L'Envers du Theatre: Machines et Decorations, published in Paris in 1875. This chapter was entitled Lighting the Stage by Tallow, Candle, Oil and Gas. 
Lighting by the Book (Francis Reid)
The experience of editing TABS taught me - among, of course, some other things - that (A) the readers liked case histories, but that (B) the average lighting design is too detailed for explanation and illustration on the printed page. However, in the past year I found myself lighting a couple of West End shows which were not only small in scale but which, unusually in a business which thrives on exceptions, were lit almost exactly according to the book (or at least according to many people's books, including my own). One was a play, the other a musical...
Lighting in the Rock n Roll Business (David Kerr)
Mention the Rock'n Roll industry to the theatre lighting purist and you are likely to find his pre-conceived notions on the subject are of long haired hippies who do not know one end of a pattern 23 from the other. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. 
Now is the time for all good men (Mervyn Gould)
The theatre world has many organisations, but surely room could be found for one more. I therefore propose to found, (with, of course, a little help from my friends) the Technical Association for Touring Theatricals-to be known as TATT.  
The need for the new organisation should be obvious. In the days of Number One Tours, a company would tour a Company Manager, a Stage Manager, a Production Manager and an Electrician. Today, only subsidised companies afford this, but the lines of communication have not changed. What has changed is that a present-day Company and Stage Manager is expected to perform all four jobs; without, needless to say, a salary four times bigger. 
 

Product News - Coloured Lights
Rosco's Colorine Lamp-Dip is now non-flammable. 
Product News - Contel and BPS to market ADB products
The agency for ADB, the Belgian light and lighting control manufacturers, is now held jointly by Conte! Limited of Stroud and BPS Control Systems Ltd of Cheshire. Last year Conte! established a combined trading and marketing operation with BPS which greatly increases their geographical coverage. 
 

Product News - New Lights
CCT has been adding to their own range of luminaires. The latest additions are to the 500W Minuette range- a profile and a pebble convex .' 
 

Product News - Stage Equipment Take-over
Rank-Strand, who took over Tele-Stage Associates earlier this year have now acquired another stage equipment company in the same area, Mole Richardson at Thetford. 
 

Saved from the Slot Machines (Francis Reid)
By autumn 1977, the decline of Cromer Pier's Pavilion Theatre was complete and its fall was imminent. It awaited the ultimate fate of a pier theatre: stage and seating out/ slot machines in. The theatre's owners, North Norfolk District Council, were understandably reluctant to apply this final solution. Without live entertainment, could a holiday resort retain its self-respect? The Council decided to call in Richard Con- don, the Irish Magician who has turned Norwich's Theatre Royal into a place that audiences are eager to fill. Could Dick rescue a tatty 400 theatre stuck I00 yards out into the North Sea on a rather exposed part of the east coast? 
 

Symphony in Red (Chris Baldwin)
Curiosity may fill the minds of visitors to some recently equipped Spanish and South American theatres. Switchgear, dimmers, lighting control, stage management desks, equipment racks and sound equipment all in matching RED and BROWN coachwork? Where do the gleaming aluminium flight cases that in 30 minutes transform into a complete control suite, in the auditorium or in a control room originate. 
The Ship is more than the crew (Dorothy Tenham)
If you work in a theatre you are part of a company of people who should all be working together as a team in the sincere hope of producing perfection in order to satisfy the paying public and themselves. The team has many component parts. It always has had and probably always will have. When I first worked in the professional theatre thirty years ago, to my 'new' eyes there appeared to be three main sections to this team. Section 1 was the FOH staff including the House Management, stage door keeper and cleaners; Section 2 was the actors and director, including the MD who, in those days, still played the piano in the Pit; Section 3 was the Stage Management and backstage staff and the workshop staff. The latter usually became backstage staff by working as showmen during performances.

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