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Schaffelaar Theatre invests in Robe

Schaffelaar Theatre in Barneveld, Netherlands, is a busy receiving house with a constant flow of shows - musicals, dance, cabaret, comedy and concerts of all types. It is also home to the Barneveld’s Symphony Orchestra, and the venue hosts regular business events and private hires.

There is a 572-capacity large hall and a small hall accommodating 198 people, and recently, there has been a serious investment in Robe moving lights. The purchase, delivered by Robe’s Benelux distributor Controllux, has so far comprised eight Paintes, twelve LEDBeam 350 RGBA FWs (with soft focus for the pastel ranges), six T11 Profile multispectral units and five TX1 PosiProfiles. The Paintes were the first to be installed in a theatre in the Netherlands. These have now been integrated into the large hall house lighting rig by Head of Theatre Technology Djordi Veerman and lighting tech Timo van Dusschoten.

The theatre was built fifteen years ago, a project initiated by the Barneveld’s Symphony Orchestra who needed a new rehearsal space and home (which is the small hall). A lighting upgrade was needed as the previous fixtures were fifteen years old and had been in use since the venue opened, and they were already second hand then. Apart from that, it was time to start transitioning to LED, so Veerman put together a 7-stage realisation plan, of which Phase 1 dealt with everything above the stage. The Robe TX1s were the first part of this, followed shortly by the others.

Veerman says that he’s seen many fixtures during his time there at Schaffelaar Theatre and working at various other venues over the last ten years, and one thing he wanted was the continuity of having only one brand in the house to cover all the moving light requirements. When the T11 was launched, he realised that this brand “had to be Robe”, although they did do a competitive shootout with several brands at another theatre before making the final decision.

There is no fixed lighting rig in either hall, lighting for every show is built according to its needs, which means that every fixture had to be capable of multi-tasking and highly portable for a “fixed” installation. Eighty per cent of Schaffelaar Theatre’s incoming shows will have their own lighting designer or operator. Productions without their own lighting person, together with the majority of the business events, will be lit by Veerman, van Dusschoten and the team.

The venue operates five or six days a week and stages around 100 performance shows a year plus 100 business events, as well as accommodating the local am-dram association and several school productions.

Pictured (left to right): Maikel Sakkers (Controllux), Djordi Veerman and Timo van Dusschoten from the Schaffelaar Theatre, and Twan Schipper (Controllux). (Photos: Louise Stickland/Paul Clarke)

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