Prescott, Arizona’s Jim & Linda Lee Performing Arts Center at Yavapai College Invests in Ayrton Rivale Profile and Karif-LT Fixtures

The Jim & Linda Lee Performing Arts Center, Northern Arizona’s premiere entertainment venue, has installed Ayrton Rivale Profile and Karif-LT fixtures in its lighting rig.  ACT Entertainment is the exclusive distributor of Ayrton lighting in North America.

The Prescott, Arizona-based Jim & Linda Lee Performing Arts Center (J&LLPAC), formerly known as the Yavapai College Performing Arts Center, offers theater seating for 1,064 and the best in live performance and satellite broadcasts at its Perry & Sandy Massie Foundation Theatre.  The event schedule is extremely diverse and ranges from hosting artists such as Dionne Warwick, Melissa Etheridge, Lyle Lovett, The Irish Tenors and Pink Martini to theatrical productions of “Anastasia” and “Fiddler on the Roof,” the Peking Acrobats, string quartets and chamber ensembles, the Prescott Pops Orchestra and holiday music shows.  The venue is also home to all of Yavapai College’s auxiliary events and hosts other community and educational events from symposia to graduations.

“Our new Ayrton lights replace fixtures that were underpowered for this space,” says Eric Tuthill, Yavapai College and J&LLPAC Theatrical Systems Engineer and Lighting Designer.  “We’re extremely happy with them: They have wildly upped our production values.”

J&LLPAC invested in 22 Ayrton Rivale, a unique 30,000-lumen profile that is the most versatile and innovative fixture created by Ayrton to date, and two Karif-LTs, ultra-compact, hybrid beam-spot luminaires with long-throw capabilities that deliver stunning visual effects.  They represent the first Ayrton purchases by the venue.

“I had rented Ayrton Perseos when I lit ‘Dancing for the Stars’ here for a local charity, and they blew away everything else in the rig,” Tuthill recalls.  “We already had a grandMA3 full-size console from ACT, and I had known Eric Abad, ACT’s Western Regional Sales, from my grandMA3 training course.  He arranged the Ayrton demos for us and was a big asset in helping us determine what we needed.  I was very impressed with the brand quality, and we chose Rivale and Karif-LTs as our first purchases.”

Twelve Rivale are mounted on motorized electrics, four are on the balcony rail to paint the proscenium and six are ready to use as needed for the deck.  “Their feature set makes them very versatile for anything we want to do: simple color washes, gobo and prism effects, and as lock-off lights with their shutters.  They are fast, color accurate and ten times brighter than the fixtures they replaced; they’ve made an amazing change to the space.”

The Karif-LTs are also flown on the rig.  “They’re a fun moving light, and we use the second gobo wheel quite a bit to create different textures,” Tuthill reports.  

Both fixtures made their debut in a November production of “Anastasia.”  “We got good feedback from those who saw the show,” says Tuthill.  “Toni Tennille, who sings with some of our local groups, came backstage to tell us she thought ‘Anastasia’ had some of the best lighting she’d seen.  The Rivale painted the proscenium and the Karifs’ second gobo wheel matched that, suddenly eating up the whole space.”Tuthill believes that “you can spend a lot more than we did in this industry and get a lot less value for your money.  We’re so happy with the Ayrtons’ versatility and quality and will continue to look at the brand as our need for new lights arises.”