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King’s Theatre Edinburgh upgrades with Robert Juliat
The King’s Theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland, built in 1906, has just emerged from a 4-year heritage redevelopment with major alterations to public and technical infrastructure. Home to a wide variety of entertainment from drama to dance, musicals to family shows, live music to pantomime, the redevelopment aimed to modernise facilities for audience, artists and technicians whilst protecting the historic character of the building.
As part of its technical upgrade and ongoing migration to LED fixtures, Bristol-based SLX supplied two Robert Juliat Arthur LT 800 W LED long-throw (4°-10°) followspots and eight Bizet 671SX (11°-26°) 500 W LED tunable white profiles, which were installed in the newly created followspot box and upper circle bridge positions.
“We needed a more powerful profile fixture for the new FOH lighting positions which, at 25 m from the stage, are further than we had before”, explains Heather Rolland, Senior Technician at the King’s Theatre. “As a major receiving house, we wanted a brand that would be instantly acceptable to all incoming productions.”
Rolland coordinated a shoot-out of top manufacturers’ products from the new lighting bridge, during which time SLX’s Ruari Cormack introduced her and her team to the RJ Bizet profiles. Capital Theatres first became aware of Bizet on a visit to the Robert Juliat factory in July 2025 when their Head of Electrics, Graham Raith, alongside Live Technology learned more about how Robert Juliat are pioneering colour and LED technology.
The King’s Theatre team included Rolland, Raith and John Robb, Capital Theatres Group’s Technical Director who led the King’s Theatre project. The Bizet profile was presented by Avril Cook, Product Specialist at Live Technology, RJ’s exclusive distributor for the UK, with Robert Juliat’s Product Manager Ludwig Lepage in support.
The team was careful to specify Bizet’s tunable white version to give them the broadest options going forward. “At the moment we want Bizet to imitate tungsten, but as lighting progresses in future it will be called on to be different things for different designers: to look like an LED source, to deliver more punch, to be tuned up for camera etc.”, shares Rolland. “Bizet will future proof us as technology develops and, as extra outputs are required, it’s handy to know we have eight on the bridge.”
Rolland already knew she wanted Arthur LT followspots to replace their old 1,200 W HMI RJ Super Korrigan units. “We found the Super Ks were no longer bright enough with the bigger, brighter rigs that were coming in before we closed”, she says. “Arthur LT was top of my wish list. It was always going to be a choice of manual followspots for us. Followspotting is a craft for live performance with an organic connection to the performer. There is an element of anticipation from the operator, and the disconnect caused through the data lag of an automated system doesn’t work for theatre in our view.”
“The Arthur LTs were a sensible choice and natural progression from the Super Korrigans”, she concludes. “The extra throw distance, increased power and LED source meant they are a ‘copy and paste’ from our original model, but bigger and with a more planet-friendly engine.”
Both the Arthur LTs were accessorised with Telrad sights, also available from Robert Juliat with a dedicated fixing kit. The King's Theatre officially reopened to the public with an open weekend on August 1 and 2, followed by the Edinburgh International Festival and a full programme of touring productions from September.
Pictured: Ruari Cormack, Heather Rolland, John Robb, Avril Cook, and Ludwig Lepage. (Photos: Ruari Cormack/Julie Harper/SLX)
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