San Diego State University’s School of Theatre, TV & Film has acquired three Robert Juliat Lucy followspots for the Don Powell Theatre on campus. The fixtures were purchased from Acey Decy Lighting in San Fernando, California.An intimate venue with a relatively large stage, the Don Powell Theatre will deploy the new followspots on the last production of the school’s 2012-2013 season, the Stephen Sondheim musical “A Little Night Music,” which opens in April. SDSU has a reputation for excellence in theatre arts offering undergraduate and graduate degrees.

“We just installed three Lucy followspots with heavy duty yokes flipping the yokes to the top and hanging the spots in our front of house beam position where they now fit perfectly,” says Peter Nordyke, with SDSU’s School of Theatre, TV & Film. “They are not that much bigger than a traditional zoom ERS, and with the angle adjustments on the sides of the yokes I was able to position them so I could cover the whole stage and not hit the iris knob.”

Lucy is a 1200W HMI followspot whose light output out-performs Xenon followspots of higher wattage. Its boasts the roster of ergonomic features which makes Robert Juliat fixtures the followspots of choice for theatre environments where high output, instant restrike and compact dimensions are real advantages. Lucy also offers silent magnetic PSU and optional DMX dimming control for perfect synch of fades and blackouts.

According to Nordyke, lighting design faculty member Craig Wolf has always liked running spots through the lighting board to achieve dimming. “Due to that factor, I’ve always had to use incandescent followspots that I rewired to run the lamp through a dimmer,” he explains. “But with Lucy’s DMX dimming module, now I will be able to do the same thing with a much better and brighter followspot.”