Hamilton chooses ETC for its UK and Ireland Tour

The multi-award winning and internationally known musical Hamilton has selected ETC fixtures and control for its UK and Ireland tour. The hit musical – which has already been a huge success around the world – is composed by Lin-Manuel Miranda and tells the story of America’s Founding Father Alexander Hamilton.

ETC dealer Encore supplied the equipment for the tour which included High End Systems Halcyon Titanium and Halcyon Platinum automated fixtures, Source Four LED Series 2 Lustr entertainment luminaires, and Eos Apex 10, Gio @5, Ion Xe and Ion XE RPU for lighting control.

The Hamilton productions around the world utilise lighting equipment which was released over a decade ago and the team working on the UK and Ireland tour were ready for a change. They wanted lighting solutions that would make this tour more sustainable in terms of power consumption and equipment support.

Warren Letton – UK Associate Lighting Designer for the show comments: “We had already started discussions a while ago about the potential to upgrade the older discharge parts of the rig for Hamilton, as the equipment is certainly reaching an age where maintenance, replacements, environmental sustainability, and lamp change costs were all becoming more serious issues to consider. When the UK Tour was due to go out for bid, we started looking in earnest at the options that were out there with the features and brightness that we needed. The existing lights get a real work out in the show, and whatever was going to replace them had to have the full feature set, in very particular orders, speed requirements and reliability. There are many sequences in the show that are quite iconic, and we needed to maintain that for the legacy of Howell Binkley’s design (Hamilton’s original lighting designer).

“Between Ryan O’Gara (International Associate Lighting Designer), David Arch (Original Programmer) and myself, we discussed the possible options that were out there that we’d experienced or heard about. On paper the Halcyon range was going to give us what we needed, and the beauty of keeping the replacements all within one product family was very appealing. Halcyon Titanium was a great option to replace the existing fixtures, they are that much brighter which meant that we could punch through more in the moments that we couldn’t before. We could also bring the overall fan 'noise floor' down significantly as we didn’t necessarily need the full power range at all times. ETC’s Matt Cowles worked really diligently with me to make sure that our color wheel had the correct dichroics in the right order to make our setups identical.”

Hire Account Manager at Encore Tom Mowat says: “Supporting the iconic musical ‘Hamilton’ on its UK and Ireland tour could not be more exciting for us at Encore.  We’re delighted to have been chosen to supply lighting to the production.

“Warren Letton, UK Associate Lighting Designer, and the team put in a lot of work to find the right solution to replace the lamp-based products seen on other productions of Hamilton around the world.  With sustainability leading the decision making, ETC’s Halcyon Titanium and Platinum moving lights were proven to deliver and, in some cases, exceed the feature set of their predecessors. Our focus at Encore is always to ensure we deliver the right product for the right job so investing in ETC’s Halcyon range was a no brainer for us, it was actually more just a matter of time. We look forward to working with the tour team and being a part of its continued success as Hamilton continues to tour the UK and Ireland.”

ETC Associate Regional Sales Manager for the UK & Ireland Matt Cowles comments: “We are thrilled to see that a wide selection of ETC products were chosen to light this hugely successful musical. Being given the opportunity to be a part of the world famous Hamilton couldn’t have been possible without the support of Warren, Encore and the Hamilton team. It’s been a brilliant experience working together and making sure that with the switch to Halcyon fixtures we were able to maintain the iconic look of the original show.”

For a chance to learn how tours of this scale operate, ETC created the Hamilton Programming Project in 2020; it follows the actual touring paperwork from the US tour of the musical. Players can take the roles of Associate, Assistant, and Programmer as they finish preparation on the provided show file.

Photography credit: Danny Kaan