Robe LED lighting has been selected for the brand new Soweto Theatre, in the Jabulani district of Soweto in Gauteng, South Africa.
At a total of a 150 million ZAR (€15 million), the new cultural arts venue – which was designed by Johannesberg-based architects, Afritects, headed by Lawrence Cithwe and Clara del Santiago – will be primarily used as a receiving house for dance and drama productions, as well as producing shows and serving as a production house to promote the arts in general.
Robe’s South African distributor, DWR, won tender for the LED lighting project, which was headed by the theatre’s lighting consultant Denis Hutchinson. As a drama venue, minimal operating noise was critical to the LED lighting solution, as were creative scope and energy efficiency.
The new theatre lighting comprises 30 ROBIN 300 LEDWashes and 12 ROBIN 600E Spots. These have been installed into the theatre’s three performance spaces – a 420 seat main pros arch auditorium and two studio venues of 180 and 90 capacities respectively.
The pros arch in the main theatre space is 11m wide by 7 high and the stage is 9m deep. A counterweight bar system has been implemented over the stage, and walkways to facilitate access around FOH.
Hutchinson comments: “Robe is a very solid and reliable brand in my experience, and units certainly need to be robust in this environment, where they will be in almost daily use for many different scenarios”.
The first production in the Soweto Theatre was “The Suitcase”, a duologue adapted by firebrand director James Ngcobo with musical direction by Hugh Masekela, choreographed by Gregory Maqoma.
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