New Elation Rig for Historic Lobero Theatre Built in 1873 as an opera house by Italian immigrant Jose Lobero, the 604-seat Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara is California's oldest continually operating theater and the fourth oldest in the United States. It recently installed a rig of Elation Fuze Max Profile fixtures, supporting everything from opera and ballet to concerts and touring productions. Before the upgrade, the theatre relied primarily on tungsten ellipsoidals and PAR fixtures. When lighting director Brad Spaulding joined the theatre in 2019, he brought moving heads to demonstrate what modern automated lighting could do. Over time, he convinced the theatre's technical director, Todd Jared, and the executive board that it was time to modernize the lighting system. "I needed to find something that was bright enough, but also light enough," Spaulding says, explaining that the theatre's existing rigging presented a particular challenge. "We use standard theatrical counterweight rigging, which limits the amount of weight we can place on the arbors. The Fuze Max were definitely bright enough, but they were also in the weight range I needed." The Lobero installed 20 Fuze Max Profiles, with four additional fixtures kept as spares. The fixtures are distributed across the venue's electrics, providing a flexible lighting foundation for productions with very different requirements. "We needed a very versatile rig," Spaulding explains. "We can be loading out an opera today that has been playing for the last two weeks, and then tomorrow we have a touring concert act that's just there for one day. So it needs to adapt from one to the other." The fixture's framing system is particularly valuable for the venue's extensive theatrical work, while also allowing Spaulding to create effect looks for concerts. Color quality was a major consideration. "With the five-color system, it really fills in the spectrum and does a really nice job of making everything look as it should," Spaulding comments. The Fuze Max Profile uses Elation's FullSpectrum multicolor LED platform and an RGBMA LED engine designed to deliver a broad spectrum of whites, skin tones, pastels, and saturated colors. With a CRI of 92 and a CCT range of 2,400K to 8,500K, the fixture gives the Lobero the flexibility to produce nuanced white light and a wide range of colors. For Spaulding, the fixture's native color quality is particularly valuable because it maintains high fidelity without sacrificing the output needed for the venue. "I needed really good color rendering for theatre, and the Fuze Max Profiles definitely have that," he says. "A lot of the newer fixtures out there with a white light chip have a filter to bring up the CRI, but then you lose intensity. But these have a natively high CRI, and they are 21,000 lumens." The fixture's additive RGBMA color-mixing system can cover a broad range of looks, and is particularly advantageous when the venue needs rich, saturated color. "The other thing that's been great about these is because they have an additive color mixing system, you can go into a deep color," Spaulding says. "You'd lose some output if you were using a CMY system, but with these, it stays a really bright, vivid color. That allows us to cover everything from tinted theatrical white light, down to super saturated colors and everything in between." The Fuze Max Profiles' combination of framing, gobo, and color capabilities has reduced the need to supplement the rig with multiple fixture types, allowing the team to achieve a wider range of theatrical looks with a more streamlined setup. "For theatrical work, we used to hang quite a few additional fixtures for gobos and texturing effects, if I needed a warm color and a cool color and maybe a neutral color, there were three fixture systems right there we'd need to cover the stage," Spaulding says. "So now we can do all that from one fixture type." Noise was another important consideration at the Lobero. "I needed quiet fixtures for opera and theatre. We do some orchestra and unamplified acoustic performances too, and we don't want to hear all the fans and motors running," Spaulding says. The Fuze Max Profiles offer quiet operation. The Fuze Max Profiles also provide ample output from the theater's 24' trim height. In many applications, Spaulding uses only a fraction of the fixtures' available output. "I find that I'm sometimes running them at only 10%, depending on the show, so they're more than bright enough," he says. For ballet performances, he often runs the fixtures at 8-10% output to approximate the look of a traditional Source Four special, increases output to 30-40% for moody concert looks, and uses full output when needed. The new system has also changed the experience for visiting lighting designers. With a steady stream of touring artists and productions passing through the Lobero, Spaulding says the response to the new rig has been consistently positive. "Now when LDs and others see our lighting rig they go, 'This is great. This is perfect,'" he says. Visiting designers have included Tom Kenny with Roger Daltrey, along with other high-profile touring productions and artists. "It was a big jump for the venue, but I think it's helping us attract more shows. Touring productions see our venue specs now and realize, 'We don't need to bring half the gear in the truck -- the venue already has a great lighting rig in place'." Barbizon supplied the Fuze Max Profiles, with David Smith serving as the account representative. The Lobero team completed the installation in-house and also integrated Obsidian Netron EP2 units for data distribution. 
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