ETC Congo at Moscow Art Theater

	The Humpbacked Horse, staged at the Moscow Art Theater. Credit: Oleg Chernous

The Moscow Art Theater has been a staple of Russian theatre in some form since its first performance in 1898. Famed as the home of Anton Chekhov's works, the theatre employs an ETC lighting system.

In 2003, head lighting designer Damir Ismagilov replaced the theatre's old system with ETC products, with two ETC Congo control consoles at its forefront. The board programmers didn't have any formal training on Congo, but were able to sit down and program them right away, thanks, the company says, to their logical layout and intuitive design. The crew spent the first year they had the boards discovering all of the consoles' features and functions.

Ismagilov and his team are impressed by the attributes that the Congo system offers that they didn't have on their old console, from the graphic interfaces and universal submasters to synchronized backup, and the ease at which the boards control moving lights. Initially, they didn't have the opportunity to try out some of the more advanced features, because the venue didn't use many automated fixtures, but, as the theatre stages more musicals every year, they're incorporating a great number of moving devices into their rig. Says Artur Ratke, the director of the Moscow Art Theater's artistic stage lighting department, "Now we're mastering work with Content Effects and Dynamic Effects. So, it turns out we use our Congos one hundred percent!"

The theatre's Congo consoles control hundreds of lights, including ETC Source Four conventional fixtures, Source Four Zooms, and 34 Source Four Revolution automated fixtures. The lighting system also includes a dozen racks of ETC Sensor+ dimmers, as well as an ETC Unison architectural lighting control system, which controls the theater's house lights, work lights and rehearsal lights on stage.

Since 2004, the lighting for every show on the main stage has been controlled by the Congo consoles, including recent products such as The Humpbacked Horse, Three-Cent Opera, Pickwick Club, These Ghosts and The Cherry Orchard.