Aktuelle News & Schlagzeilen

Tallinn City Theatre re-invests in Robe

The Tallinn City Theatre is re-opening after a three-year closure that saw implementation of a renovation and technical upgrade programme, including the purchase of new Robe moving lights - fifty-five T2 Fresnels and seventeen T2 Profiles - and the addition of a new main venue, which is two stories below ground and brings the theatre’s performance space total to seven - four main, two extras/experimental and an outdoor area.

The theatre, founded in the 1960s, is housed in a maze of interconnected medieval merchants’ houses in the heart of Tallinn’s old town. Head of lighting Emil Kallas explains that, with a 350 capacity, the newest venue is now the largest hall in the complex with the most substantial lighting rig including the 72 new Robe moving lights, which were delivered to the project by Robe’s Estonian distributor E&T, also based in Tallinn.

The new hall, built two stories dug down into the ground, has 24 motorised fly bars and eight trusses in the roof, and the lights are distributed across these. The other venues are The Black Box which can accommodate 128 people, the Small Stage which seats 85 people and the Heaven, a flexible space ensconced in the roof of the building with a capacity of 140. The new Robe lights were specified by Kallas and his team of five lighting crew.

The new space has ten metres of headroom for the motorised house bars. Two RoboSpot systems were also part of the investment, and these will be used in the new venue for remote follow spotting, replacing traditional follow spots. The additional flexibility of running RoboSpot systems gives the option of using the luminaires conventionally in the rig or as dedicated follow fixtures at any time.

Kallas and the team thoroughly evaluated a rented RoboSpot system in the temporary venue before deciding it was a viable purchase. The theatre also has a previous history with Robe: the first fixtures in there were Robe’s first generation of theatrical LED moving lights, the DL4 series, together with LEDWash 600s and ParFects, installed around twelve years ago and “all still working many years later”, says Kallas who has been in the head of lighting role for seven years, adding that it is also the intention to add some IP rated Robe products to the inventory for the outdoor space.

The Tallinn City Theatre’s schedule is busy, with around fifty shows typically staged a month - produced and received - across the various spaces. Whilst the theatre was closed, the company worked from a temporary home at the nearby Salme Cultural Centre, where the lighting rig also contained some Robe elements - twenty-three T1 Profiles and eighteen Tetra2s.

Pictured: Emil Kallas (on the left) with E&T’s Olev Luhaäär. (Photos: Louise Stickland/Paul Clarke/Siim Vahur)

www.robe.cz

© 1999 - 2025 Entertainment Technology Press Limited News Stories