Lionel Richie in the Spotlight with Selecon

All the technical aspects of Lionel Richie’s hugely successful South African tour at the end of last year were managed by Gearhouse SA. They pooled their resources from their branches in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban to provide all the staging, rigging, lighting, video and audio for the shows.

Anthony Banks, Operations Manager for Gearhouse Rigging, was head rigger for the tour, which was staged at a mix of indoor and outdoor venues.

In Cape Town Gearhouse used an 18m wide x 12m deep TFP roof and Layher scaffolding to construct the PA Towers, while the Durban gig was staged on a 20m wide x 14m deep Stageco roof with integral PA wings at a height of 25m. The Johannesburg shows, which concluded the tour, took place in the Coca-Cola Dome, a 13,212 seated capacity venue which was sold out for 2 nights.

The show at the Dome involved 28 points straight into the roof and some complex bridling to suspend a total of 9.3 tonnes of production equipment into the roof, which has 350 kg maximum loading on all nodes, except for rings 11 and 12 which have 500 kg loadings. The motors were all CM Lodestars – a mix of 1/2, 1 and 2 tonnes.

Rob Baker, a regular freelancer for the Gearhouse Cape Town branch, worked with 4 touring crews and 2 lighting crews from the local branches.

Gearhouse matched the plot sent by Richie’s LD Joel Young, which consisted of three 54 ft (m?) long straight trusses, each loaded with 7 bars of 6 x PARs and following a clean, classical theatrical style with a blacked out stage, a basic PAR wash and moving light ‘specials’ layered over the top and used for colour and movement.

There were 12 x Martin Professional MAC 2000 Washes on the upstage truss, and 9 on the mid truss, along with 14 x Selecon Pacific Zoom Profiles distributed between front and back trusses for band specials and key lighting.  Another 10 x MAC 2000 Profiles were used on the floor for hard-edged aerial beam effects.