Robe LEDBeam 150s at Cape Town's Baxter Theatre

	(l-r) Franky Steyn, Julian Baeties, and Benny Arendse. Photo: Louise Stickland

Robe LEDBeam 150s have been installed at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town, South Africa, where they are reportedly in use nearly every day. The theatre, located on campus at the University of Cape Town, has five performance spaces plus a garden, which is also used for shows, delivering a program of drama, dance, and other disciplines. The theatre's schedule includes the annual Baxter Zabalaza Theatre Festival showcasing upcoming local talent. Many show produced there also tour internationally.

The fixtures, supplied by the Cape Town branch of Robe's distributor DW, were purchased following a decision by the five-person crew and production manager Marisa Steenkamp. "We needed some small flexible lights and LEDBeam 150s were well-priced and ticked all the boxes," says crew member Benny Arendse, who is joined by his colleagues Franky Steyn and Julian Baeties.

Arendse notes that before the LEDBeam 150s purchase, fixtures would sometimes be rented in if required, as was the case for a production of Othello lit by Patrick Curtis last year. This helped spur the decision to obtain the units.

The crew appreciates the additional scope and adaptability the LEDBeam 150s bring to the Baxter. They like the 60-degree zoom, which means it can be used equally as effectively for a spot or a wash. Steyn says the range of whites and the tungsten emulation effects are also useful, adding that they stage numerous small shows "where it integrates perfectly into the rig and the available space."

Older Robe products still in use, including two 600E Spots and four 600E Washes, were among the Baxter's first moving lights; more recently, the theatre invested in five Robe Spiider LED wash beams.

"We don't have so many moving lights here, but the ones we do have are good quality and make a real difference to how the shows can look, as well as giving great value," notes Baeties.

The Baxter Theatre was opened in 1977 and is most prolific in staging productions in Cape Town and the Western Cape. During the apartheid era in South Africa, it played a crucial role as a space for progressive, multiracial productions, benefiting from the university's academic freedom.