With locations in Las Vegas, NV, Louisville, KY and Orlando, FL, EPS offers inspections and training on production rigging, in addition to creative artistry, staging mechanical design and rigging for flying performers.
With Christmas production planning in full swing for many churches, there will be more staging and rigging changes than usual. For some churches, addressing the dangers involved with inexperienced volunteers helping with these tasks is becoming a top priority.
Church Production Magazine spent some time recently talking with Dennis Parker who is Production Warehouse Manager at Church of the Highlands in Birmingham, Alabama, who recently hired (EPS) Entertainment Project Services of Las Vegas, Nevada, to do professional staff training on staging and rigging.
Parker says there were a series of incidents at the church that prompted the move. “My first week on staff I had a co-worker replacing a light fixture on a single-man Genie Lift and when he was at height replacing the fixture, he dropped it and it landed on the stage next to me. There was also an incident a short time later where a supervisor was up in the still in our main auditorium and dropped a tape measure that fell all the way to the ground. So, I just felt like with things like that happening often that we needed some extra training.” Parker also talks about trying to figure out “rigging math” and why that is so important.
Eric Rouse is Director of Rigging and Training at EPS, LLC (Entertainment Project Services).
Parker hired EPS to come to his church for regular training sessions. Eric Rouse is the company’s director of rigging and training and says since so many churches like Church of the Highlands are doing concert quality productions, they really need professional rigging and staging knowledge. He says churches are not the only venues that lack adequate training on this subject. “You see this a lot on the purely entertainment side in theaters and arenas around the country as well. Sometimes they don’t place the same value on that knowledge as they do on others. It really it just comes to not having a clear understanding of what some of the dangers are and what some of those hazards are. I think really part of the challenge is sometimes places just don’t know what they don’t know.”
In the interview with Church Production Magazine Editor and Publisher Brian Blackmore, Parker and Rouse discuss the steps taken at Church of the Highlands and some of the most important lessons churches need to seek out, as well as the necessity of continued educational training on this subject.
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