Endla Theatre Re-Energizes With Robe

Endla Theatre in Pärnu, Estonia, has reinvested in Robe LED products across its two performance halls as part of a wider conversion to LED lighting, related to the Estonian “Green Turn” initiative. This has seen 16 of the country’s major theatres – a mix of local government and private performing arts institutions – convert lighting stock from tungsten-halogen to LED over the last 12 months.

In fact, the push for making the Green Turn a reality actually originated at Endla.

The situation was prompted by increasing challenges in finding enough lamps to replenish bulbs for the existing stage lights, so Margus Vaigur, Endla’s lighting designer and head of lighting, and CEO Roland Leesment prepared a proposal to upgrade all their lighting to LED sources and submitted an application to the Estonian Ministry of Culture.

Endla then consulted with EETEAL – Eesti Etendusasutuste Liit, the Estonian Association of Performing Arts Institutions – a prominent employers' association representing the interests of the country’s professional performing arts institutions, which in turn approached the Ministry of Culture in 2021 on behalf of multiple venues.

Under the leadership of Roland Leesment, all the EETEAL member theatres joined forces and collectively negotiated with the Ministry of Culture, who supported the idea and formulated the ways to finance the project to the benefit of all venues.

Roland co-ordinated the project on behalf of a total of 27 participating theatre organisations, with each one compiling a list of individual lighting needs.

The project was officially announced by the Ministry of Culture in early 2024, which was followed by a tender process that resulted in a massive order for Robe distributor, Tallinn-based E&T Valgus (lighting), as the vast majority of the major venues involved picked an assortment of Robe products.

These Robe fixtures have been supplied to the various venues by E&T over the last two years.

Endla’s new lights were a straight old-for-new swap, and from Robe they received 32 x T1 Profile and 12 x T1 Fresnels, 13 x Robe Spiider wash beams, 13 x LEDBeam 350s, 12 x iParFect 150 FWQ RGBWs and two T1 Profile Follows Spots, together with two RoboSpot BaseStations.

The Robe luminaires are around 25% of the equipment that has been replaced at Endla, which has swapped all tungsten-halogen sources in their 572-capacity main hall and 150-capacity black box studio space.

Margus lights many of Endla’s shows himself – they stage approximately 350 to 400 performances a year – and also works as an external lighting designer for other projects.

He specifically likes Robe’s “excellent” additive colour mixing systems, which made T1 a great choice for Endla, both for general stage lighting in the main hall, plus front and key lighting and follow spotting.

“We chose to work with the Robe T1 Profile, T1 Fresnel and Spiider LED wash beam because the additive colour mixing is extremely accurate and well calibrated when used with our existing lighting console’s Eos software,” explained Margus, adding, “This is very important for us, as we don’t have to manually mix five or more additive colours to achieve the desired result. For example, mixing five colours additively on a Lee 600 (Arctic White) manually, without software assistance, is almost impossible!”

They also match well with the theatre’s other luminaires, with both halls featuring a mix of Robe and fixtures mainly from one other brand.

The T1 Profile FS and RoboSpot system has unlocked another new dimension of flexibility.

Roland echoes how the new Robe lights boost the creative scope of lighting in the theatre, because they do so much more than just dimming. They enable changes to be made fast, so experimenting and changing up as needed can be done rapidly, also reducing time in certain scenarios.

Apart from that, the advent of the new Robe products has reduced energy consumption and made it six times more efficient than before, although it is more complex to do a direct comparison as – with all the changes – they also now use lighting differently.

The lumen output onstage had dramatically increased, as the old 2K halogens have been replaced with the LEDBeam 350s.

Previously, Robe MMX Spots and LEDWash 600s had resided at the theatre for some time, so the lighting team was already familiar with reliability and quality.

Margus also underlines the importance of having a good local distributor when choosing a brand and purchasing new equipment:

“Estonia is a very small country and naturally there are not local distributors for every lighting manufacturer, but with Robe represented by E&T, we are very satisfied with their technical and after-sales support, which is super quick and efficient.”

About Endla Theatre

Endla Theatre was founded in 1875 and is named after a legendary lake in central Estonia. The original theatre building was constructed in 1911 in Art Nouveau style, and Estonia's Declaration of Independence was proclaimed there in 1918. Partly damaged by fire during World War II in 1944, it was then fully destroyed by Soviet authorities who despised the link to independence, and the current theatre was built in 1967. Estonia restored its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, and Endla Theatre was extensively remodeled in 2001.

The theatre’s acting company is highly respected. Their repertoire includes dramas, comedies, dance and musicals plus a regular open-air summer season taking advantage of Pärnu's popularity as a seasonal seaside destination. In 2024, Endla welcomed an impressive 87,000 visitors through the doors.

Photo Credit: People + technical photos by Louise Stickland, show photos are by Pirit Loog, courtesy of Endla Theatre.

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