A natural progression from my involvement with the professional lighting at The Spa Pavilion in Felixstowe was for many of the amateur companies using the theatre to seek my help with lighting for their shows.
Following on from these requests for my expertise, and after some prompting by the District Council's Entertainments Manager Wally Croft, I set up Showlite Stage Lighting in November 1985. My aim was to offer professional lighting design and operation to the local theatrical community at an affordable price - with a little sound work thrown in for good measure.
The business was almost too successful because for several years Showlite was providing the lighting for almost every non-professional performance which took place in the theatre. With the addition of my full time job at BT's Research Laboratories and the professional show work which I did as an employee of the theatre my long-suffering wife and family got used to me being out six and sometimes seven nights a week for most of the year. Of course being involved with the annual Dennis Lowe pantomime at the Spa meant that this absence included the run up to Christmas and most of the Christmas holiday from Boxing Day onwards.
Over the years between 1985 and 2004 I provided, either personally or through Showlite, lighting for most professional shows at the Spa Pavilion as well as a whole host of other shows including in no particular order:
In 2003, for various reasons, I changed the company's trading name to Showlite Sound and Light and went 'back to my roots' by concentrating on the provision of top quality indoor and outdoor public address systems, although I do still enjoy lighting small scale shows when I have the time.
Since 2003 the sound side of the business has expanded enormously. Amongst other things, I now have:
The loudspeakers can be mounted on a variety of stands, some of which go up to 11ft in height and carry up to six of the weather-proof loudspeakers, and they can be connected together by 150M of indoor cable or 1000M of weather-proof outdoor cable. To connect the microphones I have 30M of 16-way multi-core cable, 30M of 8-way multi-core and over 250M of individual cable. To power it all I can run 140M of mains cable fed from 32A, 16A or 13A supply sockets or use four 12V batteries and two control units - one 12V and one 24V.
As well as supplying equipment on a 'hire only' basis, we attend a wide range of events in the course of a year - everything from carnivals to conferences and fetes to funerals, with quiz nights and a wedding or two thrown in. Our regular client base now includes the Ipswich branch of E.A.C.H., Ipswich JAFFA Running Club, Suffolk Coastal District Council, Farthing, Singleton and Hastings Funeral Directors, Optua, Aldeburgh Carnival Committee, Aldeburgh Angling Association, Aldeburgh Town Council, Otley College and Sudbury Choral Society, as well as numerous other individuals and organisations who either hire equipment from us or use our advice, installation or repair services.
If you would like Showlite to help you then please give me a call on 01394 274935 or drop me an e-mail.