Vince Rattenbury and John Newton

Vince Rattenbury of Lyme Regis and John Newton have been working hard to completely change the lighting set up at the Marine Theatre Lyme Regis.

John Newton of LymeLight, who has taken responsibility for the major lighting changes being installed, designing the new system with Trustee Nick Lawrence said, “These changes are long over due, and will make an enormous difference to the groups using the theatre: enlarging the back stage area and giving increased flexibility to the lighting designer and operators.”

The plugging system back stage has all been removed and replaced by brand new all singing and all dancing Chillis, Zero 88, supplied by  Stage Electrics. A new  Memory Lighting Desk has also been installed, it’s a Jester with a new lighting console from Zero 88. It offers direct control of up to 48 channels of DMX either using submasters or a traditional theatre playback stack. 12 auxiliary buttons are provided which can be used to trigger DMX devices such as scroller's, smoke machines or strobes.

The first show to  use the new lights is “Sound the Jubilee” which co-incidentally tells of the John Newton who wrote “Amazing Grace” So while our John Newton was adding the finishing touches and explaining the desk to Jacky Hedley Tuffs, the New Scorpion Band were telling the other John Newton’s tale, and the co-incidence is even greater as both were priests for part of their life! Vince and John worked non-stop to make sure the lighting was ready for the show on Friday night, and were delighted to hand it all over to the theatre team at 5pm on 29th February 2008.

Vince admitted “I have really enjoyed doing this job, theatre lighting is really challenging, I would quite like to have a go at lighting a show now.”

Lyme Arts Community trust is enormously grateful to Nick Lawrence, who as a loyal trustee has mounted popular Summer Evenings of Music and Christmas shows like Peter Pan and Alice! whose profits he has given to the Theatre specifically to buy new lighting systems. Nick said “I can’t believe we have actually installed this new lighting system at last.It’s been a dream of mine to both modernise the theatre’s lighting system and make more room back stage – and we have achieved both! It’s a great day!”