This year’s USITT Conference and Stage Expo was held in Phoenix March 13-17.  It was a hot week in the desert, but theatre technicians and their mentors alike braved the heat and came west to mingle and attend numerous sessions on topics that included everything from “Stump the Electrician or Rigger” to how to make your scene shop a safer working environment.

The Barbizon booth was fully staffed with members of our team from the East Coast, Midwest, and Western offices.   A heavy presence was to be had from our local Phoenix office who’s members helped us with the load in and staffing the booth during the show.

There were swatchbooks a plenty for everyone and Barbizon distributed hundreds of our Electrician’s Handbooks, “Things You Should Know” laminated rigging cards, Phillips and GE lamp information and then there were the foam airplanes.  Not as coveted as the SSSL velour bags but we did hear that some of the planes may have found their way into local hotel pools and used as dive bombers on unsuspecting sunbathers.

In addition to celebrating our 60^th birthday it is also our tenth year of sponsoring the USITT Lighting Design Award that is awarded to a young designer or technician who has demonstrated excellence or outstanding potential in the area of lighting in the performing arts while pursuing a graduate degree.  It was established in 1997 by Barbizon in memory of Sam Resnick and in honor of Sid Bloom.  This year’s recipient is Holly Blomquist from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  Some of her recent designs include: Bad Dates at the Madison Repertory Theatre , The Illusion for the Berkshire Theatre Festival, Tis Pity She's a Whore, According to Coyote, and Master Class for UW Madison's University Theatre, and Vanessa for University Opera.  Holly is also excited about the upcoming completion of her MFA in lighting design from UW this coming spring.

Other exiting happenings at the show included ETC’s debut of the SmartFade ML lighting console that has the capability of controlling 24 moving lights and 48 individual dimmers.  They also had the recently introduced Eos on display for people to play with.

Barbizon also donated a $250 gift certificate to the ESTA Foundation’s Behind the Scenes initiative which provides financial support to entertainment technology industry professionals when they are ill or injured. The program was created by The ESTA Foundation so industry members could support each other in times of crisis. The model is simple: Individuals and organizations contribute money to the program, and Behind the Scenes provides grants for emergency situations. With this initiative, our industry can make sure our colleagues are cared for when tragedy strikes. For more information check out www.estafoundation.org .  With a donation for the raffle people who entered also got the new and improved ESTA Behind the Scenes pin that has a white led that fades in an out.  The pins are available through the ESTA Foundation website and will be at both the Broadway Lighting Master Class in May and at LDI this November.