The Saskatchewan Cultural Exchange society is an organization that focuses on delivering arts programming to the community through collaboration with both artists & other organizations. They also operate a venue that hosts live events ranging from fringe theatre, singer-songwriter folk music to thrash metal. When they were shopping for an upgrade for their lighting, they found the best value with Bruce and Alyssa at Christie Lites Sales.

The major considerations for the room were a modern, up to date system that touring acts would use without demanding additional rental packages, ceiling height, power consumption, simple operation, and of course, the fixed budget.

The foundation of the lighting is it’s rigging, and we started by recessing lighting pipes up in between the ceiling beams to maximize the height. We put pipes in a few extra places so that touring acts would have a place to hang lights they bring along, or the venue could re-arrange their rig if they wanted.

For front wash we used ETC ColorSource-Pars, which are able to both get the warm natural skin tones desired for folk acts and poetry readings, and the intense saturated colors that rock and metal acts desire.

On stage lights we chose the Martin Rush MH-1 for profiles & MH-6 for zooming wash fixtures. By using LED fixtures we were able to spare the venue from pulling extra circuits to the stage, and the maintenance costs of replacing expensive arc-lamps.

The ETC ColorSource-40 Console was the perfect control platform. Most shows in this venue do not use a dedicated lighting operator, so the console had to be simple enough for the audio technician to bring up looks as needed, but powerful enough to handle moving lights and LEDs.

This rig is rounded out with a Martin Magnum 2500Hz hazer, Swisson OptoSplitter, and ETC ColorSource-Relays.