Wenger | J.R. Clancy: The new school year has officially begun, and with it comes the exciting challenge of building the perfect production for your school. For any academic institution, the goal is to create a show where students are able to safely learn, grow, and create art. This can be both in the wings and on the stage. Planning for the fall and spring musicals has never been easier, especially now that Wenger has officially joined forces with Creative Conners.
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When I worked with Creative Conners one thing that I was pleasantly surprised by was their focus on education. A few of their products are made simply to educate people on how exactly their other products work and how to incorporate them into their theater world. One of the big projects that I was put on was filling their stock of their Trainee product and I have since encountered a few of them out in the wild! Gareth (and the others) are incredibly informative and know how to share their knowledge in a way that is accessible to anyone who is interested in learning about automation. My first introduction to him was when he was the keynote speaker at an automation conference out in LA. My TD and I were sitting there ready to be bored out of our minds by some old man just going on and on about automation in a way that is only really accessible to those who already know about automation, but within the first few minutes of Gareth’s speech, I was hooked. For such a small company (both in the amount of people working there and size of their workshop), they do a lot of cool and useful things.
Creative Conners has some excellent equipment paired with simple, easy-to-understand software. When I read that they were joining Wagner, I was excited to see what would come of it. I think it’s fantastic that this partnership is giving Creative Conners the ability to reach more theatres and schools across the country, providing students with opportunities to work hands-on with winches, motors, and the control systems that go with them. I first worked with their system as an undergraduate and remember it being intuitive, supported by state-of-the-art equipment that helped prepare me for the industry. Having also worked with other control systems, I’ve found that Creative Conners does a great job tailoring information to the user’s level. By comparison, other systems can overwhelm students with too much information too quickly, which often leads to confusion while they’re still developing a solid grasp of the concepts.
The acquisition of Creative Conners into the Wenger Corporation rounds out their portfolio to slowly encompass all ranges of theatres, trying to become an avenue for smaller theatres while maintaining the quality and safety required for all the risks involved with creating imaginative theatrical scenery. Creative Conners has been targeting lower budget theatres in its software, hardware, and education. It has become an easy and comparatively inexpensive option for automated scenery that could cost upwards of one hundred thousands dollars easily with all the axes, control hardware, and software. Hopefully this partnership will help Creative Conners continue to expand their availability to help theatre professionals in smaller venues to bring magic to even more stages. Their continued development of their free software that is intuitive to use and learn is a remarkable draw point when most automation systems need dedicated professionals and classes to have a full understanding of how they work.
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