M-SERIES PLEASANTLY SURPRISES KKNK PROGRAMMERS
by Jesse Dullabh, Lighting Technical & Controller Support
The ABSA KKNK or Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees (Little Karoo National Arts Festival) is one of South Africa’s oldest and largest Afrikaans festivals. Held annually in Oudtshoorn it offers a platform for Afrikaans artists to present and interpret their art and culture of the Afrikaans community in South Africa. This year’s edition took place from 3 to 11 April and there was particular cause for celebration as it was the 21st KKNK.
Electrosonic SA sponsored numerous Martin M-series consoles which included M1 and M2GO’s. Renier Smit (Lighting Technical Sales & Support) and I journeyed to Oudtshoorn to support the festival’s programmers on the above equipment. Before the festival started, we trained the programmers and assisted with design solutions. After that we were on stand-by to the teams throughout the festival for technical support.
Many of the programmers and operators had never been exposed to such diverse and powerful consoles. Theatre design demands very structured shows, so the ease of programming offered by the user friendly Martin consoles came as a great surprise to many of the KKNK’s designers. The individuals were impressed by the speed with which they could create and play back their dynamic programming designs, and found the consoles a pleasure to work with. The ability to copy, modify and set timings are key to creating a flow, and these Martin features which were very much appreciated by all the users.
The powerful yet simple layout of the Martin-Series software give programmers control. The software is diverse, yet user-friendly enough to allow programmers the chance to develop their own style of programming.
The consoles where used in various venues including SANW Auditorium, Johnny Bisschoff Hall and the Gimsaal. Elton Landrew, Lee-Ann van Rooi, Dawid Minnaar, Sandra Prinsloo, Nicola Hanekom, Deon Lotz, Aletta Bezuidenhout and Henk Opperman were some the artists who made use of these venues to showcase their talents. These professionals were extremely happy with the speed at which the production and lighting plotting times occurred as it gave them more time to rehearse and tweak their performances.
The KKNK was a great opportunity for the M-series consoles to prove that they can be as powerful for theatre designs as they are for Rock concerts. Rudi Kesting from Production Projects stated: “It was a real pleasure to have Electrosonic SA and the Martin M-Series on board. It certainly raised standards to the benefit of South Africa’s premier theatre showcase.” We looked forward to being at KKNK next year and to further showcase the power of Martin professional lighting solutions.