This year marks a milestone for our franchise, celebrating 40 years covering theatre starting with Theatre Crafts, 30 years covering lighting with Lighting Dimensions, and 20 years as the pre-eminent entertainment technology show with LDI.
Of course, we also just celebrated our first year in the convergent world of Live Design. As part of the year-long festivities, we'll be looking at back issues to see how far the industry has come, starting this month with Theatre Crafts, March 1987:
The cover story featured set designer Tony Walton, pictured in his Upper West Side studio in Manhattan, with assistants (clockwise, from left) Steve Saklad, Dana Kenn, and Susan Lamb (photo by Joel Weltman). The story showcased Walton's designs for The House of Blue Leaves and The Front Page at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theatre.
A special report looked at Southeast regional theatres and local designers.
Lighting designer Paulie Jenkins was featured.
“Retrofitting the Sixties” discussed the state of stage hardware, including lifts, turntables, and stage machinery.
A roundup of fog machines featured products from Rosco, Stage Lighting Distributors, Tracoman, Newth, Theatre Magic, Roctronics, Meteor, and Mole-Richardson.
Featured products included The Phoebus Mighty Arc II spotlight, Theatre Literature's Litlites lighting design software, Great American Market's Colowiz color changer, Atlas Sound's articulated mic stands, and two new Soundcraft consoles: Series 8000 and Series 200NR.