Endla Theatre, Estonia, Boosts Efficiency with Robe LED Gear

	The Robe luminaires constitute around 25% of the equipment replaced at Endla, which has swapped all tungsten-halogen sources in its 572-capacity main hall and 150-capacity black box studio space. Photo: Pirit Loog, courtesy of Endla Theatre

Endla Theatre in Parnu, Estonia, has reinvested in Robe LED products across its two performance halls as part of a wider conversion to LED lighting, related to the Estonian "Green Turn" initiative. This has seen 16 of the country's major theatres -- a mix of local government and private performing arts institutions -- convert lighting stock from tungsten-halogen to LED over the last 12 months.

The push for making the Green Turn a reality originated at Endla. It was prompted by increasing challenges in finding enough lamps to replenish bulbs for existing stage lights, so Margus Vaigur, Endla's lighting designer and head of lighting, and CEO Roland Leesment prepared a proposal to upgrade all the lighting to LED sources and submitted an application to the Estonian Ministry of Culture.

Endla then consulted with EETEAL -- Eesti Etendusasutuste Liit, the Estonian Association of Performing Arts Institutions -- a prominent employers' association representing the interests of the country's professional performing arts institutions, which in turn approached the Ministry of Culture in 2021 on behalf of multiple venues.

Under Leesment's leadership, all EETEAL member theatres collectively negotiated with the Ministry of Culture, which formulated ways to finance the project to the benefit of all venues. Leesment coordinated the project on behalf of 27 participating theatre organizations, with each one compiling a list of individual lighting needs.

The project was officially announced by the Ministry of Culture in early 2024, followed by a tender process that resulted in a massive order for Robe distributor, Tallinn-based E&T Valgus, as most of the major venues involved picked an assortment of Robe products. These Robe fixtures have been supplied to the various venues by E&T over the last two years.

Endla's new lights were a straight old-for-new swap, and from Robe it received 32 T1 Profiles and 12 T1 Fresnels, 13 Spiider wash beams, 13 LEDBeam 350s, 12 iParFect 150 FWQ RGBWs, and two T1 Profile Followspots, together with two RoboSpot BaseStations.

The Robe luminaires constitute around 25% of the equipment replaced at Endla, which has swapped all tungsten-halogen sources in its 572-capacity main hall and 150-capacity black box studio space.

Vaigur lights many of Endla's shows himself -- the theatre stages approximately 350 to 400 performances a year -- and also works as an external lighting designer for other projects. He says, "We chose to work with the Robe T1 Profile, T1 Fresnel and Spiider LED wash beam because the additive color mixing is extremely accurate and well-calibrated when used with our existing lighting console's Eos software. This is very important for us, as we don't have to manually mix five or more additive colors to achieve the desired result. For example, mixing five colors additively on a Lee 600 (Arctic White) manually, without software assistance, is almost impossible."

Leesment says the new Robe units enable changes to be made fast, so experimenting and changing up can be done rapidly, also reducing time in certain scenarios.

The advent of the new Robe products has made energy consumption it six times more efficient than before, although it is more complex to do a direct comparison, as with all the changes, they also now use lighting differently. The lumen output onstage has dramatically increased, as the old 2K halogens have been replaced with the LEDBeam 350s.