This can be played back at a slow rate to simulate the fl icker of a protected tea light or at a higher rate to simulate the more rapid fl ickering of an open pillar candle. The Lady M is a black-box phone ringer that rings a standard phone at the push of a button. The one shown at USITT was programmed with the UK ring cadence, but a USB port allows you to reprogram it to ring with whatever cadence you want. The Lady M shuts off when the phone is picked up, so there is no buzzing in the earpiece, as there is with some other ringers on the market. More small things: H&H Specialties showed the latest version of its No. 451A Really Useful Carrier. What’s new is that it now has precision ball-bearing wheels, so it’s even quieter and smoother running than before. The unit is rated for 200 lbs. working load, a rating high enough to carry Who kept Billy shining through eight shows a week? These ETCP Certified Entertainment Electricians. Billy Elliot danced in the beams of hundreds of lights — 100 moving, 300 conventional, and a few hundred practical fixtures — from a mix of eight manufacturers. Throughout the show’s three-year run, the lights performed flawlessly, thanks to ETCP Certified Entertainment Electricians Pete Donovan (moving light technician) and Kevin Barry (production electrician). ETCP Certified Entertainment Riggers and Electricians are our industry’s most qualified, up-to-date entertainment technicians. Hire them when you need perfect lighting on stage, without the drama backstage. Special thanks to our top contributors and media partners: Top contributors: IATSE, InfoComm, Live Nation, Production Resource Group, and USITT. Setting the stage for safety. etcp.plasa.org etcp@plasa.org SPRING 2012 Media partners: Church Production; Facility Manager; Lighting&Sound America; Live Design; Pollstar; Projection, Lights and Staging News; Protocol; Rental & Staging Systems; Systems Contractor News; Technologies for Worship; and Theatre Design & Technology. PLASA ACTSAFE AMPTP CITT IATSE IAVM INFOCOMM THE LEAGUE TEA USITT any adult American male up to the 75th percentile in body weight. However, there is a big warning sticker on it that says, “This item not intended for the use of lifting or transporting people or other living objects,” which suggests a new twist to Tom Cruise’s famous line in Top Gun . Frank Morrow Company had a booth that was simply a back wall and a table, both covered with scores if not hundreds of decorative metal stampings about the size of your hand: butterfl ies, fl owers, frogs, leaves, rosettes, Route 66 signs, et cetera. The stampings, available in aluminum, brass, copper, and steel, are sturdy (0.020" thick for most, but some up to 0.062" in thickness), and pretty. The company has about 6,000 stamped and cast decorative pieces in its catalog. You could decorate the house with them, but for the USITT market they are great components for constructing set and costume props. The borders, leaves, and rosettes, in particular, would lend themselves to crown construction. The result would not be too heavy to wear, but would give an appropriately metallic clang after Gertrude drinks to salute Hamlet’s fencing skill. Controlling clangs and other noise was the purpose of the sound control products InterAmerica Stage showed in one of its two booths at the Stage Expo. This is a line of banners, curtains, panels, and quilts and rigging hardware to support and move them. I was particularly impressed by the IAS-25 line. These look like quilts made of black duvetyne, but are suprisingly heavy for their thickness. Holding a square sample about a foot away from my left ear had an effect like turning off one earpiece on a set of headphones. Suddenly, the whole Stage Expo moved right. Next year’s USITT Conference and Stage Expo will move to the Frontier Airlines Center in downtown Milwaukee, WI, March 20-23. It would be nice if the sun shines, but the convention center is served by the indoor skywalk that connects the major downtown buildings and indoor shopping malls and spans the Milwaukee River. Rain or shine, we can be urban, indoor hikers when not at the Expo! I’ll see you there. 84 SPRING 2012