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“He is first and foremost a theater practitioner, and that makes a huge difference in how he approaches making the products that we use.” “Fred did not come at this from the business point of view, or a manufacturer’s point of view,” says Mark Stanley, a UW–Madison alum who is an associate professor of lighting design at Boston University. When asked about the success of ETC, many observers point to longtime CEO Fred Foster. Evidence of its expansion into architectural lighting appears in equipment on the tallest building in the world, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa. Today, ETC has offices in Hollywood, New York, Hong Kong, London and other entertainment capitals. Its equipment also illuminates Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre and Disney theme parks worldwide. The company’s credits include lighting systems at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, and the Hollywood Bowl. The basic design for the rigging came from outside, he admits, but “When we buy an idea, we always find some way to improve it.” Photo by David Tenenbaum
#Stage lighting design through the ages software
Since then, the company’s original focus has diffused from those solid-state lighting controls to one-stop shopping for theaters wanting the best in fully integrated lighting, including controls, software and spotlights, of which ETC has built almost 4 million in Middleton.Ĭhad Weberg, a 22-year ETC veteran, heads rigging manufacturing at the firm’s Mazomanie plant.
#Stage lighting design through the ages full
The UW–Madison undergrads who started ETC invented a solid-state stage-lighting control that was small, efficient and programmable.ĮTC donated a full range of spotlights and controls to Frederic March Play Circle in UW–Madison’s renovated Memorial Union, in exchange for the right to use the theater as a test site.Īfter ETC was spawned by theater student Fred Foster, French major James Bradley, and physics majors Bill Foster and Gary Bewick, it survived a period of standard startup turmoil before receiving injections of business - and credibility - in 19, when ETC quickly moved from obscurity to the big leagues with two contracts for lighting controls at Disney theme parks.
#Stage lighting design through the ages install
The company traces its roots to a charismatic professor of lighting who took his wide-eyed students to New York to install his lighting designs on Broadway and in other theaters. Aside from a Texas subsidiary that makes moving lights for events, essentially all of its sales volume is designed and produced in Dane County.Īnd ETC maintains ties to UW–Madison, including hiring many students (several of whom go on to become full-time employees) in a summer program and tapping the expertise of the Manufacturing Systems Engineering program and UW Center for Quick Response Manufacturing. Globally, ETC now has more than 1,200 employees, including 650 at its headquarters outside Middleton and 200 in Mazomanie. The control system would be smaller, more efficient and programmable. The company’s four founders, all UW–Madison undergraduates, made an audacious promise: They would base a control for stage lighting on solid-state technology. Way back then, microprocessors - still called “computers on a chip” - were just beginning to revolutionize industry, culture and commerce. Stage rigging is a newish line of business for Electronic Theatre Controls, which was born in 1974. The hoists being tested on the floor nearby are bound for a theater in Israel. In a spotless, 10-acre factory in Mazomanie, Wisconsin, Loyal Burkhart II assembles gears for hoists that will raise screens and backdrops above a theater stage somewhere in the world.
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Employee Yia Vang assembles parts at ETC.