Zero 88 rounds off a highly successful year for their latest theatrical lighting console the ORB with a debut at the ‘Brits Off Broadway’ festival in New York.
The ORB theatrical lighting console from Zero 88, ended a phenomenally successful introductory year with a trip to New York City, starring alongside actress Nicola McAuliffe in the production ‘A British Subject’.
‘A British Subject’ was originally performed at the Pleasance during the Edinburgh Festival and was directed by Hannah Eidinow and produced by Pleasance Theatre Trust Ltd. Following an initial consultation and training with ORB specialist Richard Lambert, Lighting Designer Mark Jonathon and assistant George Bishop chose the ORB for pre-programming prior to their highly acclaimed festival run.
A British Subject
After the Edinburgh festival, ‘A British Subject’ was selected to appear in the Brits off Broadway festival, which ran at the 59E59 Theaters in New York from November 3rd 2009 to January 3rd 2010. For the New York production Pleasance Technical Operations Manager, Matt Briton, took on the job of relighting the show. In order to cut down on the time required in the venue, Briton decided once again to use an ORB – now running as the house desk in Pleasance Islington and specified for many of the Pleasances high profile shows this year during the fringe.
“As someone who has used the Frog 2 for a number of years, the power, versatility, and user friendliness of the ORB made it a no brainer to bring it across for the show. Once again the support from Zero 88 has made this production an incredibly painless process. Their ongoing support is invaluable to the Pleasance and as expected the desk performed flawlessly,” commented Briton.
The ORB is the latest lighting desk from Zero 88. Its development was led by user feedback including that of the Pleasance technical crew. Zero 88 Product Manager, Peter Kirkup, commented “Working with the Pleasance gives us an incredible opportunity to gain user feedback from every sort of user imaginable – we deal with complete novices in some venues, right through to professional lighting designers and programmers in the larger venues. Nothing beats hearing the feedback of a real user; they’re happy to tell you what’s right and what’s wrong, and hearing that is important to making sure we fix the ‘what’s wrong’ whilst maintaining the ‘what’s right’.”
It has been a busy first year for the ORB. Some of the many credits include Scott Mills the Musical (at the Edinburgh Fringe), the opening ceremony of the GSSE (in Cyprus) and now A British Subject in New York. Productions using the ORB have varied from plays to dance and from full scale musicals to stadium gigs – once again proving the versatility of the ZerOS platform to adapt to a users needs. Zero 88 is also pleased to see many of their key distributors taking ORB into their rental stocks including Stage Electrics in the UK and Eenorm Facilitair in the Netherlands. A number of high profile venues have taken on ORB as their desk of choice, including the Turkish National Opera and Stadthalle Langen near Frankfurt.
Lastly, Zero 88 announced the imminent release of version 5.4.0 software for all ZerOS consoles which adds Tracking Backup functionality to the consoles and off-line editor (Phantom ZerOS). Using a simple Ethernet connection between desks or console to off-line, the current show file is automatically exchanged between desks and continuously updated. Should the main (Master) console fail in any way, the Backup device can immediately start outputting DMX and the show will continue as if nothing had happened. This provides the ultimate security for mission-critical shows – if “the show must go on”, can you afford not to run a tracking backup?
