Dear Members of the TC,
September was the month of our annual commission meeting.
We met in Belgrade from 15 till 18 September in conjunction with the BITEF festival and together with the meeting of the PCC.
We need to thank Irena and her team for their wonderful hospitality and their creative organisation.
They made us all feel very welcome in their country.
We also want to thank our members for their interesting lectures they prepared for the meeting.
Content and form were of the highest international standards.
Because shortly the minutes will be send to all of you, I will just mention the most important headlines here.
- Risk Assessment: we will collect different risk assessment checklists on the website for cross reference.
- Costing Forms: we will collect different costing forms on the website for cross reference.
- Theatre Atlas: the theatre atlas template we finished some years ago after long discussions and evaluation seemed to have become obsolete the last years.
The discussions on the meeting convinced us that they still have their value to a lot of people.
That’s why we will publish and promote it again and re-evaluate it.
- Production Rider Template: similar to the theatre atlas we will develop a template for a production rider in order to help colleagues to draw up relevant technical information sheets for their productions.
- TC section of the OISTAT Portfolio needs text and pictures.
Everyone is invited to put pictures on the members only section of the website of which 3 will be chosen.
Nice prices to win!
- CEN25: Bert Determan is attending the CEN Workshop ‘Lifting and load-bearing equipment for stages and production areas within the entertainment industry’ that will result in European Standards.
The workgroup is working on schedule and results are expected by the next Showtech in Berlin.
There was a lot of interest from countries outside the European Community.
We hope Bert will keep us updated.
- The changing economics and the responsibility of the theatre technician: Martin Tschermak presented us a lecture about the way they reduces production costs by re-evaluating the technical planning. This caused a lot of discussion, as every one in theatre is looking for means to safe money.
We will try to collect similar experiences for the benefit of our colleagues.
- SPP: thanks to Alex, our new Serbian member, we re-discovered what OISTAT is about.
As in "the old days" when we were trying to help our colleagues in the east-European countries with foreign contacts and information, we now have members from "emerging countries" as we call them, who are desperately in need for the same thing.
They need working methods, knowledge of materials and techniques, and they can only get this by contact with "emerged countries"
Lots of things the TC considered common, out of date or not special before, seems to be of big interest to them.
What some of us consider common knowledge is not available to everyone, and we can transfer it trough simple contacts with each other.
We want to work further on this project, but we will start in Serbia to develop a working method that may be transferred to other countries.
We call it the SPP, or Serbian Pilot Project.
- Scenofest/PQ07: Marina Raytchinova invited the TC to organise some projects in Prague for Scenofest.
Three projects came up for proposal:
We will organise a tour trough the exhibition with groups of scenography students led by a technician, considering the technical aspect of the different designs.
We will organise a workshop where a scenography students design a set together with a technical student, keeping budget and practicalities in mind.
We will organise a panel of experienced theatertechnicians from all over the world about technical consequences of scenographic design. This project will be known under the codename of OMC project.
I must thank the members who already started some projects, and must ask you all to visit the OISTAT website on regular basis, as this will become our main means of communication.
You can ask for your personal code for the members only section at the secretariat.
Best Regards,
Ivo Kersmaekers
Chair Technology Commission
