Theater De Leest Rolls with Large Robe Investment

	Some of Theater de Leest crew aith Controllux's Maikel Sakkers (2nd from right). Photo: Louise Stickland

Theater De Leest in Waalwijk, the Netherlands, is a contemporary cultural centrepiece of the city and its surrounding region, which opened in 1996. A major refurbishment ten years ago saw the addition of the 200-capacity black-box theatre hall, complete with a retractable seating system, making it a flexible space, which, together with the existing 520-seater main auditorium, offers musicals, concerts, cabaret, family shows, opera, dance, youth theatre, and film screenings.

Luc van Heijst, head of technical at De Leest since 2004, oversaw the specification and tender process, resulting in the supply of 230 new Robe static and moving LED lights, delivered by Robe's Netherlands distributor, Controllux.

The project featured eight different types of Robe fixtures: 37 TX1 PosiProfile with gobo modules, 16 ESPRITES with Robe's TE (TRANSFERABLE ENGINE) HCF LED engine, 24 LEDBeam 150s, 25 LEDBeam 350s, 18 Tetra2s, 24 ParFect 150 FWQs, 48 T15 PCs, and 38 T11 Profiles again with the gobo modules.

These can be rigged on the large hall's 45 motorized over-stage bars and side bars, and in the smaller hall's fixed grid; those not in use are stored and moved around in custom meat racks designed and fabricated for efficient running. They are the first moving lights in the house, on top of replacing conventional profiles, PCs, Fresnels, and PAR cans.

The initial discussions on how to introduce LED began in 2019, van Heijst says, including input from senior lighting technicians Peter Visser and Raymond Eckhardt, looking to modernize and capitalize on various incentives to install and utilise greener technology. (The project was slowed down by the pandemic.) In particular, they wanted multi-spectral light sources to achieve the vibrant colors produced through additive color mixing. Other important elements were quietness and smooth dimming.

"Everyone is very happy," says Visser, who matched the Lee filter color range with exact correct values in the Robe LED engines -- tested against a 1,000W PAR as a benchmark -- measured with a spectrometer, and translated and saved to the console.

Visser visited the Robe factory in the Czech Republic in 2024 and was impressed with the skill, dexterity, and detail that go into the production of each product. He also sees the advantages of Robe manufacturing everything -- including PCBs -- in-house for its product lines.

At Controllux, the project was coordinated by Maikel Sakkers, who worked to fulfil the tender according to the timeline. A full fibre control network was installed by local partner DRM-Showtechniek, located in nearby Raamsdonksveer, as part of this latest upgrade, and the stage lighting is controlled via sACN. At the time of writing, the land outside De Leest was being remodelled from a utilitarian concrete urban square to a greener and more attractive garden-style environment, ready for the theatre's winter and spring seasons.