Rubber strap at work!
With each show that comes into Arcola comes a different lighting rig. We encourage production companies to look at ways they can reduce the carbon footprint of their show, and last week we introduced a new way of doing this during the pre rig of Uncle Vanya.
The large amount of cable used in theatre lighting rigs is usually taped to a lighting bar with PVC tape, which is not reusable. We have estimated that approximately 198m of this tape is used per production. We did think of using Velcro ties instead, but Lighting Designer on Uncle Vanya, Alex Wardle came up with an idea using rubber bands, which we developed so we could use recycled materials.
For the production of Uncle Vanya however, we’ve swapped this PVC tape for reusable rubber straps, made from used bicycle inner tubes. Just under 100 of these were made especially for this production. We hope that more companies will be interested in using these straps if the trial on Uncle Vanya goes well, so that eventually we can be free of PVC tape on our productions.