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Tony Award Winner Mimi Lien Shares Her Set Design Process for Marks of RED
In this exclusive interview, Mimi Lien details how her awe-inspiring experimental design came to life. From humble beginnings as a dollar store durag in a cardboard model box, to a full-scale piece in-situ, Mimi collaborated with Rose Brand engineers and fabricators to build a stage-enveloping womb from red Boost stretch fabric.
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Houston Ballet’s Venetian Contour Curtain, Winches, and Open Platform Automation System
When Curtains Become Choreography: Houston Ballet’s Raymonda
When Houston Ballet developed Stanton Welch’s world premiere of Raymonda, the scenic design called for a grand and elegant Venetian Contour curtain that required precise, repeatable control to achieve a highly choreographed effect. The design featured three individual curtains acting as layered portals progressing upstage, fabricated from platinum-colored Eclipse Satin. Each layer was independently controlled, with motion carefully timed to create a progressive reveal of the stage - a visual effect dependent on accuracy, synchronization, and consistency.
This wasn’t a curtain that simply opened and closed. It was part of the storytelling. Rose Brand manufactured custom curtains, winches and an open platform automation control system to achieve Houston Ballet's objectives as described below.
The Challenge
How do you create complex, coordinated motion across multiple curtain layers, on a tight load-in schedule, without sacrificing the flexibility needed to build and refine cues during rehearsal?
To achieve the intended effect, each curtain layer required:
- Independent control across multiple lift points
- Precise timing between layers to maintain the reveal sequence
- Repeatable, reliable performance from rehearsals through performance
The Solution
Rose Brand and ADC delivered a system built around 30 ConTour™ winches, a compact and reliable spotline winch integrated with Axis1 Open Platform Automation™. Each winch operated as an independent axis, allowing every lift line to be programmed individually. This made it possible to fine-tune the shape and movement of each curtain layer. The result was a system where the curtains do not just move, they performed and reinforced the choreography on stage.
Open Control That Adapts to Production Needs
From the outset, Houston Ballet underscored that control and programming flexibility would be critical. The system was initially configured using ADC’s Axis1 Open Platform Automation System Controllers as a bridge between the Ballet’s existing Creative Conners software environment and the ADC ConTour Winches.
During the build period, that system approach changed to gain greater flexibility and speed during technical rehearsals. The production team chose to program and control the curtain system directly from a GrandMA lighting console, utilizing Axis1 as the bridge between the lighting console and the ADC ConTour Winches. Since Axis1™ is built on an open architecture and can natively interface via Art-Net (the lighting console's communication protocol), it allowed the more flexible and speedy system to be adopted immediately without any:
- Hardware changes
- Additional integration effort
- Downtime
Built for Performance and Longevity
The full system, developed collaboratively across production, engineering, fabrication, and automation teams, was designed not just for a single production, but as a reusable platform for future work. By combining ConTour™ winches with the Axis1 open control platform, Houston Ballet achieved a system that delivered accuracy, flexibility, and repeatability without limiting how the production evolved.
See the System Test of These Gorgeous Venetian Contour Curtains, Winches & Open Platform Automation System:
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Westridge School Upgrades to Safer, Sustainable IFR Stage Curtains
Westridge School in Pasadena recently underwent a campus-wide upgrade of soft goods, including the stage curtains in the historic Fran Norris Scoble Performing Arts Center and Braun Theatre. Rose Brand designed, fabricated, and installed new inherently flame-retardant (IFR) curtains, sustainable fabrics, and acoustical wall treatments to replace the school’s aging cotton drapery. Thanks to the rigging expertise of the Rose Brand West installation team, the project brought new life to the Westridge stages—creating safer, greener, and better-sounding performance environments for students.
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Transforming Open Space into a Stage at Park Avenue Armory
It’s no easy task to transform a wide open, cavernous space into a captivating, all engrossing theatrical environment. With a little help from Rose Brand, the magicians at Park Avenue Armory did it for the critically acclaimed production of “The Lehman Trilogy.” How do you build a theatre from scratch in the massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall? Start by creating a full proscenium with nearly an acre of masking curtains
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Motorized Security Curtains
Cascade Coil asked us to partner with them on a project at Western Kentucky University. They had been asked to provide mesh security curtains for three food venues as part of the Commons at Helms Library building renovation project. Cascade Coil is known for its woven metal coil mesh panels (think fireplace screen, but on large scale with many beautiful finishes available). They were happy to provide the mesh panels requested but didn’t have a motorized track system that could handle the long, complex serpentine curved layouts and weights involved in these systems.
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3-D Backdrop, Digital Printing and More!
Only Mozart had to work a tighter timetable than Rose Brand on his last opera, “The Clemency of Titus.” Thank you to LA Opera for the opportunity! Our integrated team of project managers, technical designers, sewing experts, scenic artists, digital printers and product procurers worked in coordinated fashion to produce the following for this amazing production:
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ADC T-Lift 2.0 is a "No-Brainer" for Touring
T-Lift 2.0 is the easiest, fastest automated curtain rigging system ever. Just ask Hootie & the Blowfish. They’re using the new ADC T-Lift 2.0 (patent pending) system on their 44-city tour. The T-Lift 2.0 system is “automatic.” Crews need minimal supervision because it’s “ready-to rig” in familiar modular truss sections. Its new self-aligning shaft means you just bolt the modules together and hang the drape. “Quick Connect” lift lines attach to the drums in seconds and allow you to leave the lines rigged into the curtain between tour stops. Aircraft cable has been replaced with flat, ½" nylon lines that are just as strong and safe, yet silent and snarl-free. Place lift lines and sheaves almost anywhere along the shaft with the newly designed open bottom "U" truss. Comes with servo motor and controller.
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Printed Floor, Backdrop and Ceiling Tiles
We worked with blackwalnut llc to specify and build printed flooring, ceiling and backdrop tiles for the NBC Sports Winter Olympics studio. Concept and design planning begin years in advance of the Olympic games. In fact, the Olympic studio’s graphically intense scenic elements resulted from months of brainstorming and product sampling. NBC Sports and blackwalnut selected Rose Brand printed “Impact” floor for the Winter games’ studio because it installed much more quickly and provided greater flexibility than the tiles used in prior years. The flexibility enabled blackwalnut to quickly adjust their design on-site in order to create the jagged rock reveals in the fabricated deck.
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New Drapes for a Landmark Theatre
Our friends at The Sandusky State Theatre, a 90-year-old landmark in Ohio, wanted to transform their main stage with new curtains. They wanted the design to both bring the stage to life and capture the theatre’s rich heritage. Inspired by photos of the theatre’s interior architecture, we designed a curtain that incorporated a prominent curvilinear architectural detail that appeared on the walls near the stage.
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