Man from Snowy River

Banjo Paterson´s The Man From Snowy River is told in an extravagant two-hour Arena Spectacular, the latest collaboration by two of Australia´s leading promoters David Atkins Enterprises and Jacobsen Entertainment.

The Man From Snowy River Arena Spectacular incorporates in its two-hour epic, a rock concert, rodeo, theatre and equestrian extravaganza; at the scale and grandeur of its inspiration, the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony.

The famous story of the thrilling chase to catch a prize thoroughbred is brought to life by more than forty horses, a selection of Australia´s best horsemen, women and stunt daredevils, and more than 60 of Australia´s leading performers.

Show “unabashedly international in its production quality”
Producer and Artistic Director of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games Opening and Closing Ceremonies, David Atkins, directs this splendid Arena Spectacular which includes wagons, cattle dogs, gigantic moving sets and sophisticated lighting systems.
 
"The Man From Snowy River Arena Spectacular is enormous in scale and absolutely cutting-edge in its technical sophistication so that audiences get a true sense of the echoes of the stockwhips, of the firelight of the flint stones, of the bold riding and of the rugged mountainside. It´s quintessentially Australian in its sentiment and humor, and unabashedly international in its production quality," said David Atkins.

MACs horse around  in Trudy Dalgleish designed show
Lighting designer for this massive Australian touring show is Trudy Dalgleish who knew right from the start that she´d need Martin lights and a [powerful] control desk.
"My original equipment list included sixty Martin MAC 2000 fixtures but they´d only give me twenty so I had to fill out the rig with [other lights]," explained Trudy. "You can see with the twenty MAC 2000s used that a rig of sixty would have been great."

“The MAC 2000s hang from the wagon-wheel shaped truss that is suspended above the arena floor. Supplying the wash for the show are 29 MAC 600 fixtures. Fourteen MAC 500s are situated on straw bales ringing the arena floor. With bucking horses they´re in quite a precarious position!

"That´s the great thing about MACs - they survive anything!" said Trudy. "Recently I used them in a tent on tour where during the day the temperature got to 43 degrees Celsius and at night it was minus 6 degrees Celsius. I had only one breakdown on the whole tour."
The horses had to be trained to get used to the lighting. Basically they were led into the arena where for about four hours Trudy threw everything she had at them!

"During the show the horses do bash into the lights but the great thing about MACs is that you can bash into them until they get stuck against the wall and can´t move - they don´t burn their motors but happily carry on," said Trudy. "They´re a really robust light and I´m very impressed by their performance in situations like this. They´re a great light for the harsh conditions of Australia."

All MACs for Man from Snowy River were supplied by Martin´s Australian distributor Show Technology. The show has sold so well the tour has been extended to re-visit some major cities.