ETC’s Eos control desk was the lighting desk for three of the four shows nominated at this year’s Olivier Awards for best lighting design, including the winner, The White Guard, lit by Neil Austin at the National Theatre’s Lyttleton Theatre.
The National Theatre embarked on a programme to upgrade all its lighting control desks to Eos some three years ago, while Paule Constable took the decision to run Love Never Dies on Eos less than a year ago, declaring herself the desk’s “biggest fan”.
Control supervisor Sarah Brown moved from her previous position as a lighting programmer to being responsible for training all the staff in the use of the Eos at the National Theatre. “While I was an operator,” she said, “I was approached to ask what I thought of the desk – and I really liked the way it works. Our previous desks had reached the limits of their capabilities, and were taking far too long to load show files. There are many things we can do on the Eos which we couldn’t do before.”
“Eos was built from the ground up with theatre users in mind, and its success in the field is reflected in that three out of the four 2010 Olivier nominated shows were lit using the desk,” said Mark White, ETC’s regional manager for UK and Ireland. “It provides easy – and fast – integrated total control of over 1,800 fixture types while maintaining ease of programming ‘conventional’ luminaires.”
“Since the desk was launched in 2006, it has collected three prestigious awards for best lighting platform, and it’s gratifying to see one of the many designers who specify Eos picking up an award of their own,” he concluded. “Our ETC congratulations go in this instance to Neil Austin for his Olivier as well as to the lighting department at the National Theatre for making it happen.”
