Marshall Bissett grew up in Central Scotland and studied theater direction at the Old Vic Theatre School. He worked on the original productions of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and toured with such acts as Chicago, Neil Diamond, and The Rolling Stones. In 1983 he founded TMB, a worldwide supplier of lighting equipment. He’s kept his hand in directing, which in retirement now vies for his time along with freelance writing and fly-fishing.
In 1963 the Beatles invaded America, a gallon of gas cost 25 cents and Acey Decy Lighting opened for business in Hollywood, CA. Founded by Cliff and Susan Renfro while Cliff was a gaffer at Paramount Pictures, the company supplied lighting and grip equipment to The Merv Griffin Show, The People’s...
Two old-school theater seats sit in the lobby of the JK Design Group in North Hills, California. Marked as rows “J” and “K” they are more than cute props. They serve as a tangible reminder of the strong theatrical roots shared by the company’s founders Edward Kaye and Jay Winters. Those roots...
ETC’S Southern California reps, Warren Mays and Tony Stefani of MPA Lighting and Controls are partial to musical analogies. Outside their day jobs as ETC’s most prolific sales team in North America, both play in local bands—Mays on guitar and vocals, Stefani on drums—including the Irish fusion...
Sometimes chance encounters turn into lifelong friendships and so it was for a young Jeff Ravitz. In the late ‘70s he was working with the Chicago band Styx and they had a show in Madison’s Civic Center. While he was setting up his front of house consoles—a standard two-scene preset linked to a...
I first met Bob Johnston in North America’s largest indoor rehearsal room—an Air Canada aircraft hangar where the Rolling Stones were rehearsing the 1989 Steel Wheels tour. I was working at TMB then and somehow we had sold the band on a set of enormous, nine-cell, color-changing fixtures, each...
The residents of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul offset their harsh winters with a vibrant year-round arts scene. The great twentieth-century industrialists who made their fortunes in flour, cattle and steel were also noted philanthropists whose legacy survives today in the many...
