The 2024 Edinburgh Fringe saw Assembly operating 26 pulsating venues featuring over 240 diverse shows embracing multiple entertainment genres, with lighting managed by Martin McLachlan, Assembly’s Festival Fringe head of lighting since 2018.
The Assembly Festival Fringe operation involves over 90 technical staff over a six-week period which includes two weeks of build and rehearsal before the three-and-a-half-week festival. McLachlan, together with a small team of four, oversees the house stage lighting and crew across all venues as well as the lighting needs of all incoming productions.
The venues range in size, from 60 up to 840 seats, each with a house lighting rig, designed and chosen to deal with all performances in their respective schedule. The larger ones each feature between four and 24 moving light adding up to a total of 72 Robe LEDBeam 150s, 18 Robe PAINTES and seven Robe T1 Profiles, mostly supplied via rental specialist, Encore.
In addition to these Robe luminaires, Assembly utilises seven Avolites, ART2000 dimmers and eight Avolites Powercube PD units. For McLachlan, the LEDBeam 150 is the fixture for the house rigs in many of these spaces for its “great colours and zoom, small size and general versatility,” he said. New in 2024 are 18 Robe PAINTES, the smallest fixture in Robe’s current TE range of multipurpose spotlights.
All the incoming companies playing Assembly venues use the house lighting rigs to the max, and in many cases additional specials are hired. “Assembly’s needs are very much driven by flexibility, and smaller sized lights are also an asset,” he commented, saying that they were very excited to have PAINTES this year, with 10 in the largest venue space, the 840-capacity Assembly Hall.
“This is another brilliant small fixture,” enthused McLachlan. “It is great for this style of work with its shuttering capabilities and plenty bright enough without being overpowering in some of these rooms.” The most confined performance area this year to feature Robe moving lights was the 100-capacity Dancebase3 with five LEDBeam 150s.
His biggest challenge at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is the relentless pace of the installation and production schedule during which all the production elements must be rigged, tech’d and used continuously for the period, coupled with finding solutions to satisfy the demands of multiple shows and theatre companies. The entire process takes stamina and energy in addition to good organisation, technical awareness, imagination and finding the right lights to work in all scenarios.
McLachlan underlined the importance of having reliable fixtures to minimise time consumed with maintenance or repair, and there is little margin for this with some venues having up to a staggering 10 back-to-back shows in a day. He commented that it’s also a great chance for technicians to grow their experience and hone their skills, and part of his job as Assembly head of lighting is also to ensure that this can be actively facilitated.
The house lighting rig at Assembly’s 500-seat Gordon Aikman Theatre (GAT) this year was augmented with seven Robe T1 Profiles, part of a sponsorship package agreed with Robe UK.
Robe’s show truck was present on site in Edinburgh for two weeks, offering training seminars, demonstrations, and product awareness sessions, all co-ordinated by Chris Purnell, Product Application Specialist from Robe UK.
