From London's West End to Washington National Cathedral… Five Stories Worth a Closer Look
- Mar 5
- 4 min read
Updated: Apr 9
Some of the most interesting stories in production lighting aren't about scale. They're about solving a problem nobody else has cracked yet, or putting fixtures into spaces that demand more than the usual approach.
Like GLP finally delivering the LED Birdie replacement that theatre designers have been asking for since ...forever. Volux enters new territory with the PHYTON, an IP66 hybrid-profile moving head powered entirely by LED. Claypaky's Peruvian distributor Novolite brings the Sharpy Plus to Lima's lighting community through dedicated hands-on sessions. 4Wall partners with UK art collective Luxmuralis for the first time to bring an immersive projection installation to Washington National Cathedral. And Master FX previews Atlas 2, a bigger, brighter, waterproof evolution of its vertical fog platform. Five stories. All worth a closer look.
Luxmuralis Unites With 4Wall to Ignite North American Debut of 'Time' at Washington National Cathedral
UK-based art collective Luxmuralis brought its immersive light and sound installation "Time" to Washington National Cathedral from January 15–24, 2026, marking the group's first-ever North American project. 4Wall collaborated with the Cathedral and the Luxmuralis team to provide design and production consulting — the first time Luxmuralis has invited an outside production entity into its creative process. Jana Chovanec and K Rudolph of 4Wall served as design and production consultants. The installation transformed the Cathedral's nave into a walk-through canvas of projection artworks by sculptor Peter Walker and original music by composer David Harper, exploring humanity's relationship with the concept of time. Luxmuralis has previously staged installations at St. Paul's Cathedral in London, Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, and Limburg Cathedral in Germany, among other landmark European venues.
Peru's Novolite Showcases Claypaky's Sharpy Plus in Exclusive Sessions for Lighting Community
Novolite, Claypaky's official distributor in Peru, hosted two dedicated Sharpy Plus demo sessions at its Lima showroom, bringing together rental companies, lighting designers, and technical professionals from the local entertainment industry. Each session featured a programmed demonstration highlighting the Sharpy Plus's beam definition, power, and versatility through live aerial effects. For context, the Sharpy Plus is Claypaky's flagship hybrid unit — a fixture that operates as both a beam light and a spotlight using an Osram Sirius HRI 330W X8 lamp, with a zoom range from 3° to 36°. Events like these are part of Claypaky's broader push to strengthen distributor relationships and build hands-on product familiarity in Latin America's growing live entertainment market.
GLP X5 Dot Receives World Premiere on Paddington The Musical
The GLP X5 Dot made its production debut on the West End hit Paddington The Musical at London's Savoy Theatre, where lighting designer Neil Austin deployed 14 of the new fixtures — two concealed in each of seven footlight shells along the downstage edge. The X5 Dot is GLP's answer to a long-standing industry request: a true LED replacement for the classic MR16 "Birdie" miniature spotlight, which has been a staple footlight and concealed-set fixture in theatre for decades. The result is a fan-free, IP65-rated, convection-cooled single-pixel fixture running at around 15 watts, with GLP's X5 RGBL color mixing, a manual twist-zoom from 16° to 43°, and a form factor that accepts standard MR16 accessories like barndoors. Austin and GLP USA Director Mark Ravenhill had been developing the concept since 2018, following their earlier collaboration on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and the fixture debuted publicly at ISE 2026 in Barcelona before going into the Paddington production. Austin also uses 57 impression X5 Washes and 26 X5 1000 Bars in the show, so the entire rig benefits from matched color calibration across the X5 Series.
From Whoa To Wow… Master FX Teases Atlas II
Master FX has announced Atlas 2, expanding its Atlas Series upshot fog platform with a more powerful feature set. The unit uses a high-velocity fan to deliver CO₂-style vertical fog effects up to 60 feet with precise start-and-stop control — the original Atlas topped out at 50 feet. Atlas 2 adds dual fluid options that let designers choose between different density and hangtime characteristics, with an integrated fluid selector that automatically tunes heater temperature to match. The lighting system has also been upgraded to 44 ten-watt RGBAW LEDs arranged in a wider array for brighter output and broader color coverage, up from the original's 30 LEDs. The unit is weather-ready and waterproof, and ships with the same touchscreen interface used across the Master FX product line. Atlas 2 begins shipping summer 2026 and is available for pre-order now.
Volux Releases PHYTON A IP66 Hybrid-Profile Moving Head
Volux has released the Phyton, which the US-based manufacturer is calling the world's first IP66-rated hybrid-profile moving head. The fixture is LED-powered and designed to serve as a beam, spot, and profile from a single head — a category traditionally dominated by discharge lamp and laser-source units, both of which carry their own tradeoffs (lamp life and regulatory boundaries, respectively). Phyton features CMY + CTO color mixing supplemented by a color wheel with high-CRI filters and MINTRA minus-mint/green correction for camera-accurate environments, along with an effects package that includes static and rotating gobos, six layerable prisms on two planes, iris, dual frost filters, and a continuously rotating animation wheel. The IP66 rating means the unit is engineered to handle both indoor and outdoor work, which is a meaningful differentiator for rental houses trying to reduce inventory overlap between weatherproof and indoor-only rigs.
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