Profession:
Systems Engineer / Managing Director, Stage Technologies

Date & place of birth:
April 2 1961; Wembley, UK

What was your first job after full-time education?
After I graduated in physics, I worked for an oil company drilling holes in the North Atlantic for three months. I hated it and very luckily a friend spotted a job with the RSC as their systems engineer in charge of looking after the technical systems, including a new power flying system at the Barbican Theatre.

How did you get into entertainment automation for the entertainment industry?
Through the job at the RSC, where I worked for six years. At the time, automation as an industry did not exist. There were only two systems in the UK, at the Barbican and the National Theatre. Those early years, working on the ground, keeping aging systems working, taught me a lot about the interaction of engineering and artistic requirements, the stresses, and strains involved. I then worked for a stage engineering company and a controls company before forming Stage Technologies with John Hastie.
   
What excites you the most about the future possibilities of automation?
Increasingly we are producing effects that could not have been achieved without a modern automation system, as designers grasp the capabilities. I talk to the kids in the theatre schools, brought up in a digital age, and you can see they get it and want to push the boundaries, rather than being frightened by computers. They’re going to be shaking things up as they work their way up through the system.

What is your involvement with Cirque du Soleil’s Viva Elvis show in Las Vegas?
Stage Technologies is delivering what is possibly the largest ever automation system to be used on a single show, with a host of groundbreaking technologies all being brought together on stage. Cirque du Soleil always pushes the envelope of what is achievable, which always makes it both fun and challenging. It’s exciting that the opportunities grow for smaller venues and projects to benefit on the back of these technological advances.

Stage Technologies made number 52 in the annual Tech Track 100 league table this year, making it one of the fastest-growing private technology companies. What’s the secret of your success?
Teamwork. Automation by its nature requires a very wide combination of talented engineers, from software, electrical, mechanical to all work together, and understand each other’s issues, to find working solutions. Delivering automation projects worldwide requires those engineers to have the backup of project managers, finance, IT support, sales, and commercial management to tackle a whole host of issues that we encounter in countries and venues worldwide. There’s no one person who alone could deliver what we do, the team has to work together to achieve.

Key breakthrough products?
The word ‘product’ is interesting, because that is what differentiated Stage Technologies at the start. Most systems that were being delivered at the time were designed for specific projects, so we aimed to create products that could be integrated to form a core system for each project, in much the same way as lighting and sound systems were assembled. That concept simply did not exist in automation at the time.
    So the first BigTow winch was born, which evolved into a wide range of winches and point hoists, along with the original Acrobat control desk, and various control alternatives including the portable Nomad desk. Building on their success, we developed a family of other products including the plug-and-play touring AU:tour cabinets and our own proprietary 3-D visualisation and show programming software, Chameleon (now eChameleon).

What occupies your free time?
Free time? There’s not so much of that. I have a passion for sailing, which I do rather less than I’d like, though I can be seen at the back of the fleet at Cowes Week each year. I play tennis, the piano, and more recently the flute, all rather badly, and spend time dealing with the angst of two teenage daughters. I’ve recently taking up running to beat the middle age spread.

Your ‘desert island disc’? 
Current favourite is The Script’s ‘The Man Who Can’t Be Moved’ but if we’re talking all-time, it would have to be ‘Slow Song’ by Joe Jackson.

What was the first gig you ever attended?  
Jethro Tull at the Hammersmith Apollo. For those of you under 35, that was in the ‘70s when the flute was as cool as a rock guitar (or at least it was when Ian Anderson played it) and you played it standing on one leg.

Finally, what would be your advice to a teenage Mark Ager? 
Decide on your dream, go for it and believe that you can achieve anything. Be prepared to be involved in the best industry in the world with the best people. Love it, because if you don’t love it and love the job you do, then this business isn’t for you.