Michael Donoghue Interview: From Gas to LED Lights & the Theatre Royal Chandelier
Title
Michael Donoghue Interview: From Gas to LED Lights & the Theatre Royal Chandelier
Date
3 August 2018
Description
Oral history interview with Michael Donoghue, Head of Sound & Lighting at the Theatre Royal
What's the story?
Born in London and involved in amateur theatre as a performer in his early years, Michael Donoghue ‘ditched’ his A levels to work professionally in the theatre. At the tender age of nineteen, in 1991 he moved to Nottingham to work as a lighting technician at the Theatre Royal.
Having clearly learnt ‘on the job’ Michael is now Head of Sound & Lighting at the venue, managing an extremely busy department.
In this interview Michael talks about how the Theatre Royal is lit, from the traditional gas lights to modern LED lighting, even for the iconic Theatre Royal chandelier.
Yes, it was gas originally. The house lights were gas. They’re now LED. They all changed quite recently now, so that all the house lights in the auditorium, for energy saving purposes, they’re just LED lights, which is quite a new technology. It’s been hard waiting for the technology to catch up because we need lights to be able to dim nicely, whereas some of the LED lights that you would buy from B&Q or somewhere like that, although they say “dim”, they’ll dim, but they still snap on at the beginning and then fade up a bit and then when you fade them down they snap off. But you imagine sitting in the auditorium and all the house lights snap on and then fade up, or you’ve got the overture of a show playing, the music’s playing, the house lights are fading down nicely and all of a sudden “bang” – you can’t have that. So, thankfully that’s a new thing for us, which is nice because it means we’re not changing light bulbs constantly, which is how it used to be, especially for our chandelier, because with the new legislation changing as well recently, we used to buy some really long life light bulbs, so you’d only have to change the bulbs in the chandelier once a year, whereas they stopped making those, because people stopped making tungsten light bulbs, they were going over to halogen and they just don’t last as long. So we were ending up having to winch the chandelier in every three or four weeks, and it’s not a small job. So, thankfully, we’ve managed to go over to LED now, so the bulbs last a lot longer, thousands of hours longer: so we don’t have to change those.
Having clearly learnt ‘on the job’ Michael is now Head of Sound & Lighting at the venue, managing an extremely busy department.
In this interview Michael talks about how the Theatre Royal is lit, from the traditional gas lights to modern LED lighting, even for the iconic Theatre Royal chandelier.
Yes, it was gas originally. The house lights were gas. They’re now LED. They all changed quite recently now, so that all the house lights in the auditorium, for energy saving purposes, they’re just LED lights, which is quite a new technology. It’s been hard waiting for the technology to catch up because we need lights to be able to dim nicely, whereas some of the LED lights that you would buy from B&Q or somewhere like that, although they say “dim”, they’ll dim, but they still snap on at the beginning and then fade up a bit and then when you fade them down they snap off. But you imagine sitting in the auditorium and all the house lights snap on and then fade up, or you’ve got the overture of a show playing, the music’s playing, the house lights are fading down nicely and all of a sudden “bang” – you can’t have that. So, thankfully that’s a new thing for us, which is nice because it means we’re not changing light bulbs constantly, which is how it used to be, especially for our chandelier, because with the new legislation changing as well recently, we used to buy some really long life light bulbs, so you’d only have to change the bulbs in the chandelier once a year, whereas they stopped making those, because people stopped making tungsten light bulbs, they were going over to halogen and they just don’t last as long. So we were ending up having to winch the chandelier in every three or four weeks, and it’s not a small job. So, thankfully, we’ve managed to go over to LED now, so the bulbs last a lot longer, thousands of hours longer: so we don’t have to change those.
Type
Oral interview
Location of item
Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall Nottingham
Rights
Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall Nottingham
Contributor
Interviewers: Jennifer Sherwood & Diane Jones
Transcriber: David Chilton
Transcriber: David Chilton
