Robe Gets Fired Up for BravoCon Live Event

	Photo: Charlie Sykes

BravoCon Live with Andy Cohen is a five-episode televised event in the spirit of Cohen's nightly talk show WWHL (Watch What Happens Live), featuring the stars of Bravo's most popular reality shows and series.

The event comes complete with panel discussions, games, and performances, as well as awards recognizing Bravospheric talents and achievements throughout the year. The November 2025 event was presented by Embassy Row Productions in conjunction with NBCUniversal at PH Live in Las Vegas.

The event was lit and production-designed by John Viesta, president and principal designer of design studio Infinite Designs Inc., who has been working on WWHL since 2010. His rig included, among other brands, many Robe moving lights: 48 iFORTES, 134 iFORTE LTXs, three iFORTE LTX followspots, and 22 Tetra1s.

The design and lighting needed to capture a live television vibe combined with large-scale theatre, as BravoCon 2025 featured 29 panels streamed on Peacock (available the day after the live presentations in Las Vegas), while Cohen separately recorded five episodes of BravoCon Live with Andy Cohen.

A version of the set had been used before, in the 2023 edition. It captured the spirit of WWHL by combining a New York City mid-century modern aesthetic and the styling of Las Vegas of the same time period, including an 80'-wide proscenium arch encrusted with incandescent lamps. Viesta also used several lighting treatments to transform the set, including built-in fixtures that added a contemporary edge.

With PH Live being much larger than the Paris Theater in Las Vegas (where the event was staged in previous years), everything was upscaled. During planning, Viesta realized that he would need much higher-powered profile fixtures to handle the 150-200' throws in the new venue. He spoke with Marth Postma, sales director at Robe North America, with whom he attended college, looking for a luminaire that looked good on camera, was bright enough to cover the throw, and could also frame small, precise shapes and areas.

"I tested pretty much every moving light in that league that was available," Viesta says, "and the iFORTE LTX was the only one that had the real firepower that I needed. Using these modern big-lensed fixtures really assisted with the general aesthetics; the abundance of fixtures enabled us to fill the airspace meaningfully," he observes.

PH Live had also just taken delivery of nearly 75 iFORTES and nine iFORTE LTXs equipped with LightMaster rigs for its house rig, so Viesta had access to them, in addition to the Robe units supplied by Main Light.

The iFORTE LTXs were all rigged in the front-of-house area, used for key lighting. They were needed to cover the whole stage, which was at times filled with people. The iFORTES were positioned on a downstage bar just above the show portal. The followspots comprised three iFORTE LTXs running on three RoboSpot BaseStations. This was Viesta's first experience using iFortes for this task. "The brightness is fantastic," he says. "They have decent CRI for camera. They look great on people and have great repeatability, so they return to exactly where we placed them. And color consistency was also very important over these distances. I'll definitely be using them again."

Various gobo iFORTE looks were used to wash and texture the venue. Viesta created a frame of fixtures outside of the show portal, alternating Tetra1s with tiny LED wash fixtures. He notes this effect made a gorgeous "pearl necklace, framing the stage."

Viesta's background is in theatre, and Broadway in particular. He has used Robe BMFLs in that world as followspots and T2s on Tina: The Tina Turner Musical (where he served as associate lighting designer to Bruno Poet), so he knew the brand already. But this was his first big televisual extravaganza using Robe in such a mission-critical way.

"iFORTES are fabulous fixtures, and I look forward to using them more frequently," he notes, adding that Robe CEO Josef Valchar, who is at the heart of the product development, is very inspirational; he also likes the fact that the company is independent and that the products are manufactured locally in Czechia.

Working alongside Viesta on BravoCon 2025 were his Infinite Designs colleagues, Tyler M. Perry, who looked after the scenic design, and Ben Travis, the technical supervisor. The lighting director was Greg Goff; Josh Selander was the lighting director/programmer, John Salzmann was the gaffer, with Tom Thayler as associate gaffer and Eric Kaspersin as best boy.

Scenery was by PRG and Daedalus, with additional scenic elements from Kihl Studios.