SCOTLAND — During the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the church of St. George’s West becomes The World@St. George’s West, opening its doors and welcoming in the color and vitality of traditional dance forms from around the globe. The shows were the result of a an idea by international show producers Toby Gough and John Simpson with the support of actor Brian Cox and Peter Gabriel, and were the culmination of donations from an array of audio and lighting manufacturers, among them XTA Electronics.
Featuring acts from what Real World’s Richard ‘Dickie’ Chappell — Peter Gabriel’s monitor engineer and keyboard technician, and the man who, along with his friends, brought together enough audio kit to make the shows possible — understatedly describes as less affluent backgrounds.
Including the Capoeira Knights from Brazil, the Zawose Family from Tanzania, Children of the Khmer from Cambodia and Hemingway’s Havana from Cuba, the shows proved a runaway success, with The World@St George’s West ultimately winning the Jack Tinker Spirit of the Fringe venue award.
“They all come from really hard backgrounds,” Chappell says. “Two of the main acts are from slum communities: one from Cambodia based in Phnom Pen, the other from Rio in Brazil.”
“We want to help out, so we bring them over here to perform and hope to send them back with an experience they won’t forget, as well as a bit of monetary support. We want to do this every year and with original art forms rather than creating any sort of fusion.”
Chappell needed to pull things together in the most cost-effective way possible and, knowing that it was the busiest time of year for rental companies, decided to approach manufacturers directly for the equipment he needed.
“If I talk to anyone in the PA companies I know, they say that if you need a good crossover unit to do interesting things, you get an XTA in,” he smiles. “I don’t think there’s anything else that does the same job. It’s just a great and easy piece of gear to use. So, I approached XTA and they were kind enough to give me a DP448 unit to use.
“We had quite a complicated way of setting up the system in the church and the 448 was brilliant for that. We had a balcony system and a main hung system and we had to split the audio between the two and separate off some sub bass. The unit was crucial for that. We couldn’t have done it without it.”
“This whole thing is about people helping each other. All these art forms need help, they need people to see them — and people came in their droves and did just that. It was great that we had help from lots of different companies, including XTA. We couldn’t have done it otherwise.”
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For more information, please visit www.xta.uk.com
