Live Design Magazine - May 2016

ENVISION I BUILD I TECH I GO MAY 2016

OADWAY YCHO ON BR S P N A IC R E AM

LIGHTING THE STEPHEN PETRONIO DANCE COMPANY • LIVE DESIGN ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS PRODUCTS OF THE YEAR • RIVERVIEW SYSTEMS MAKES PHARMA ROCK A 311 HOLIDAY • TALKING WITH LDS: ERIC CATHCART AND HEATHER GILBERT

TABLE OF CONTENTS ///

M AY 2 0 1 6 /

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TECH ///

5 QUESTIONS

ERIC CATHCART, LIGHTING DESIGNER /// B Y D A V I D S . J O H N S O N BUILD ///

PRODUCTS OF THE YEAR

/// B Y M A R I A N S A N D B E R G A N D E L L E N L A M P E R T- G R E A U X

LOADOUT ///

IN LOVE WITH LIGHTS

A LOOK AT THE CAREER OF LIGHTING DESIGNER HEATHER GILBERT /// B Y D A V I N A P O L E O N

HIVE MIND

JOE PARADISE CREATES A BEEHIVE RIG FOR 311’S BIENNIAL UNOFFICIAL HOLIDAY CONCERT /// B Y M E G H A N P E R K I N S

COVER STORY ///

A Bunch Of Overachievers

Live Design Awards Honor Six Designers And Design Teams For Their Excellence

/// B Y E L L E N L A M P E R T- G R É A U X , M E G H A N .

PERKINS, AND MARIAN SANDBERG

Pharma Rock

Riverview Systems Group’s Evan Williams And Franco

Berardi On Staging For Zimmer

Biomet’s AAOS 2016 Annual

Meeting Booth /// B Y M A R I A N S A N D B E R G

FEATURES ///

Psycho Killer

American Psycho Translates From Screen To Broadway

/// B Y N A T A L I E R O B I N

Text, Dance, And Light

Ken Tabachnick Illuminates The Stephen Petronio Company.

/// B Y E L L E N L A M P E R T- G R E A U X

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5 QUESTIONS

ERIC CATHCART

The Black Keys’ Turn Blue Tour

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5Qs Eric Cathcart Lighting Designer

/// By David S. Johnson

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n 2011, designer Eric Cathcart lit the final, legendary performance of LCD Soundsystem at Madison Square Garden. He’s hardly been off the road since, working with diverse acts such as The Black Keys, Van Halen, Garbage, The Darkness, and Devo. He’s also expanded his palette to include not only lighting but also video. We caught up with him just as he was finishing up Spring Fling, a small arena tour with indie bands Cage The Elephant, Silversun Pickups, Foals, and Bear Hands.

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5 QUESTIONS

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With its four acts and relatively short time on the road, Spring Fling felt like something of a throwback to tours of old. Tell us how you ended up working on that gig.

Garbage’s 20 Years Queer Tour

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The Spring Fling Tour came about essentially because of my work with Mike Grant for The Black Keys. Cage The Elephant was one of our support bands on the Turn Blue Tour. Most of the band would come watch the show during the TBK set from front of house. Mike, The Black Keys’ lighting director, and I had loosely kept in contact with CTE, so when it was time to design that tour, it just sort of happened.

The tour itself was about having all of the bands on the same playing field, so to speak. The entire rig was available to all of the bands, minus a small floor package that we designed for Cage, which was brought in specifically for that set. Eamonn McKiernan was out with the tour as the LD for Silversun Pickups and Foals; in addition to Cage, I did Bear Hands. When Mike and I began designing the show, we first designed the overall tour for the current CTE album cycle and scaled back from there.

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For such a simple kit, you were able to bring some impressive looks to that tour. What were some of the gear highlights for you?

ERIC CATHCART

Budget was a big factor in the design of this tour. We were fortunate to pretty much know who the lighting vendor [Premier Global Production Company] was going to be during the design stage, so we chose fixtures that were available off the shelf.

We had used the [Harman Martin Professional] MAC Viper AirFX for The Black Keys, so we knew what a workhorse it was going to be going in. Paul “Arlo” Guthrie had put nearly 100 of the GLP impression X4s on the Van Halen rig, so I was also quite familiar with the performance of that fixture. The fixture I hadn’t worked with before was the Martin Atomic 3000 LED; I was blown away. That will be my go-to strobe now. It is able to maintain the classic bulb and reflector look of the original Atomic but with the added bonus of an Aura effect behind it for some subtle color looks.

The Black Keys’ Turn Blue Tour

MAY 2016 \\\

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5 QUESTIONS The Black Keys’ Turn Blue Tour

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Though your background is in lighting, you’ve started getting involved in projection and scenic design, most recently for the The Black Keys’ Turn Blue Tour.

How did that come about, and do you intend to pursue that area further?

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About eight years ago, I was doing a test show for an artist to see if it would work out. They were playing video clips from a DVD player, and every now and again, the play or pause icon, or the time stamp, would appear on the screen. I told them that, if they hired me, I would make sure that would never happen again. I had no idea at the time how to do it, but I was determined to make it happen for them because I knew that it could be done.

When I went out with The Black Keys as the crew chief, Mike Grant, the lighting director, and I became great friends and collaborated on the festival rig for the El Camino Tour. I guess the powers that he liked it and asked us to design the Turn Blue Tour. When it came time to design that, we wanted the whole thing to have a flow of all parts working together and to make everything feel seamless. We didn’t want people to be looking off stage right or off stage left at giant video screens rather than actually looking at the stage where the show was coming from.

I’m rambling now, but the answer is yes, I plan on pursuing and approaching my designs as an overall production designer. Now I have started using video as one more lighting tool and love to use LED panels as backlight. For Garbage, a good deal of my front light came from projectors. With the way consoles interact with media servers, video has become just another fixture.

MAY 2016 \\\

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5 QUESTIONS

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Van Halen aside, you seem to have become one of the go-to designers for the indie rock scene. Careful career strategy or happy accident?

Very happy accident! I have been very lucky to have met some great people to work with in this business and to be able to work with the music that I already listen to. The first 15 years of my career in lighting were just doing what came along, mostly teching and corporate gigs. I always made the best of it; I was getting to do lighting, and that’s all that mattered.

Somewhere along the way, maybe 2008, I was asked to fill in on a few Devo shows; that pretty much changed everything for me. Since then, I have worked with great designers, such as Dan Hadley on Devo and The Flaming Lips, and Arlo on Van Halen. They allowed me to have my own input when it came to programming, and then it just expanded from there.

ERIC CATHCART

The Black Keys’ Turn Blue Tour

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Van Halen’s 2015 North American Tour

Cage The Elephant’s Tell Me I’m Pretty Tour

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5 QUESTIONS

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What act is on your bucket list as one you’d most like to work with?

Getting to be the lighting director for Van Halen was a big step in that direction. Unfortunately, most of the bands that I would really like to work for have some of my friends as their designers, so I will just live vicariously through them. Almost everything that Dan Hadley and Susanne Sasic get their hands on is an act that I would really like to light up.

Just because it might be one of my main influences as to why I do this crazy thing that I do, I would really love to design a Queen tour. Roger Taylor’s son is now playing drums for The Darkness; that might be as close as I get.

ERIC CATHCART

The Black Keys’ Turn Blue Tour

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Harmony needs balance, silence, and quality of light.

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FE ATURE

A BUN OVERACH

LIVE DESIGN AWARDS HONOR SIX DESIGNERS AND DESIGN TEAMS FOR THEIR EXCELLENCE

ADAM POWELL

/// BY ELLEN L AMPERT-GRÉ AUX, MEGHAN PERKINS, AND MARIAN SANDBERG

NCH OF HIEVERS F

or a second year, Live Design recognizes outstanding individual designers and teams for excellence in design achievement. This year, six winners are honored: Abe Jacob, for a legendary career in sound design; Beowulf Boritt, for innovation in scenic design on and Off-Broadway; Laura Frank, for technical excellence in media technology for television, special events, theatre, concerts, film, and corporate; Full Flood (Robert Dickinson and Robert Barnhart), for the best in live broadcast lighting for awards shows and special events; Natasha Katz, for sustained achievement in theatrical lighting design; and Seven Design Works (LeRoy Bennett, Cory FitzGerald, and Tobias Rylander), for creativity in collaboration for concert tours, film, and television. The awards will be presented Monday, June 13, 2016 at Upper Story by Charlie Palmer in New York City.

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ABE JACOB We have used the phrase “The Godfather of Broadway Sound Design” to describe Abe Jacob so many times, but it is so very fitting. Not only did his early career include mixing for none other than Jimi Hendrix, but he has designed sound for Broadway every decade since. Of course, he hasn’t gotten a Tony Award (yet), but that’s hardly his fault. His theatrical sound design credits include Jesus Christ Superstar, A Chorus Line, Dancin’, and the original production of Evita, but the list goes on, and there are too many to list. And he was the creative consultant for Live Design’s Broadway Sound Master Classes for a dozen years. An award is to be presented annually in his name in future years.

His achievements can best be summed up by his colleagues: Nevin Steinberg, one of the few sound designers to ever receive a Tony nomination (for Rodgers And Hammerstein’s Cinderella), currently represented on Broadway by Hamilton and Bright Star; and the extraordinary Chita Rivera, two-time Tony Award 16

winner for The Rink and Kiss Of The Spider Woman.

I have known Abe since I was six years old. Well, not exactly.

I grew up in Westchester, and my parents were frequent theatregoers.

In 1972, my folks returned from a trip to the city and a performance of Jesus Christ Superstar. They were raving about the show, but the thing that stuck with me was a detailed description of a specific moment of stagecraft. The one thing they couldn’t stop talking about was a number in which the principle characters were surrounded by a writhing ensemble of dancers who, using highly choreographed and stylized gestures delivered handheld, wired microphones to the singers, each one receiving the mic just before the solo.

And adding to this bit of theatre magic, the microphone cables were dressed to resemble the vegetation and vines on the set. This vivid memory—the impression it made on my parents, and subsequently on me—is how I first “met” Abe.

Rain

CYLLA VON TIEDMANN

Superstar was just one of the many shows that benefitted from Abe’s innovations, but I think it illustrates how his great mind brought expertise and experience to bear on a changing art form at just the right moment. This kind of work requires curiosity and candor, humility and hubris, empathy and ethics, all of which Abe has shared with literally four decades of protégés, all of whom owe our careers to him in some way.

I have been lucky enough to count him not just as a mentor but as a friend. I continue to look to him for guidance, occasional solace, and always a good laugh.

And I congratulate him on this well‐deserved award.

—Nevin Steinberg, Sound Designer I have known Abe Jacob for over 40 years, allowing me to be aware, for the rest of my career, of the brilliance and importance of clear, creative sound. I never realized just how truly complicated and sensitive the art of sound design is. And Abe has been successfully designing and changing as the theatre and theatres change. My first knowledge of sound design was foot mics. Then, through the pioneering brilliance of Abe Jacob, it has been transformed into what it is today, and Abe is still doing what he loves and is dedicated to do.

—Chita Rivera, Actress MAY 2016 \\\

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BEOWULF BORITT Beowulf Boritt took home the 2014 Tony for Best Scenic Design of a Play for Act One at Lincoln Center Theater and was first nominated in 2011 for The Scottsboro Boys. He was nominated once again this year for his work on Thérèse Raquin, in which a river runs across the stage. His innovative approach to scenic design popped onto Broadway with The 25thAnnual Putnum County Spelling Bee, and his productions include Rock Of Ages, the revival of On The Town, and Hand To God. He works with a who’s who of contemporary theatre directors and choreographers, including James Lapine, Hal Prince, and Susan Stroman. He has also designed no less than a hundred OffBroadway productions, not to mention ballet and the circus.

Legendary director Hal Prince and Tony Award-winning lighting designer Howell Binkley share their thoughts about Boritt in conjunction with his Live Design Award for innovation in scenic design on and OffBroadway.

One of the things I teach my students, and all new designers, is that you must be kind and open to everyone in the room and in your theatre as a whole from day

one, and it is also one of the first things I noticed about Beowulf. For over ten years, Wulfie and I have worked together on numerous pieces. His warm, genuinely friendly, inquisitive personality makes for a remarkable collaborator.

When a lighting designer is hired to light the work of a brilliant set designer, it is exciting. However, when a lighting designer is hired to light the work of a brilliant set designer, who also happens to be a wonderful human being and a genuinely collaborative artist, then that is a joy, and it certainly makes for a more successful process and, inevitably, a more successful piece.

I love Wulfie’s extraordinary attention to detail in his designs. He does tremendous amounts of research, which, in turn, fills his sets with detail. That attention to detail is spectacular for me as a lighting designer because Beowulf considers lighting specifically as he builds his sets. He has always been a great designer with whom to work. Everything from practicals on stage and beyond are part of his thought processes, and as an LD, I long for those details because they are fun for me to work with and also because the end result is that it all helps create a sense of realism.

Our most recent project together, Come

Thérèse Raquin

JOAN MARCUS

From Away, has a tremendous amount of chairs that make up the set in various locales. With my background in lighting dance, when I first saw this, he and I began to affectionately call this beautiful moving of the set pieces our “chair ballet.”

Via this “chair ballet,” Beowulf is able to transport his audience from a bar to the inside of a large airplane to the expansive outdoors. It is heaven for me, as his welcomed collaborator, to light. Beowulf ’s imagination is boundless.

—Howell Binkley, Lighting Designer I’ve known Beowulf Boritt since I was introduced to his work at the New York Public Library clambake. It was an annual occasion where the best young graduates from theatre design school displayed their wares, either scenery, lighting, or costumes.

I attended it every year seemingly checking out over a hundred young artists. Beowulf was one of the most impressive. The year was 1996.

I recommended him to my daughter, who was directing Jason Robert Brown’s

musical, The Last Five Years. He did a brilliant job. I first saw it in Chicago and then it opened Off-Broadway. I knew instantly that I would like to work with him, and I have on a number of shows, including Lovemusik and Paradise Found.

He has the perfect combination of talent, tact, an even disposition, and boundless enthusiasm. What more could I ask for? That he is being honored now serves to remind me that he was 26 when I met him, and miraculously, though he does not look a day older, he is 45!

As I write this, I am working with him on the next musical entitled Prince Of Broadway. We opened in Tokyo about six months ago, and he delivered a magnificent job. As it’s a compilation of many of my shows, he managed to synthesize all of them. I suppose it ranks among the most difficult shows a designer has ever been handed, and he knocked it out of the ballpark. I am looking forward to singing his praises in public on June 13.

—Hal Prince, Director

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LAURA FRANK For more than 20 years, Laura Frank’s career has shifted and evolved, from electrician to programmer, editor to screens producer, technologist to visualist; but no matter the title, she has always been a creative partner. She now owns her company, Luminous FX, LLC, and has worked in various worlds of entertainment, including television, film, theatre, concerts, and corporate events. She has programmed lighting for various musical artists, including David Bowie, Madonna, Miley Cyrus, Martina McBride, and more. Her credits also include Broadway productions Matilda The Musical and Shrek The Musical, broadcast events Latin Grammy Awards and People’s Choice Awards, and the 2003 film School Of Rock.

Frank’s peers and comrades, Soren West and Hugh Vanstone, express their thoughts on her Live Design Award for technical excellence in media technology.

Laura Frank is a delightful human.

That doesn’t qualify her for this award, or for any award, for that matter. What does qualify her?

Laura has technical qualifications, to be sure. By combining her extraordinary intellect and curiosity with chutzpah, she 20

has positioned herself on the cutting edge of our industry. She has made a career of implementing new technology for creative ends, from the first moving lights at [Philips] Vari-Lite to custom-made software written to give creatives the tools needed to bring ideas to life in volumetric video, paving the way for the still-new language of “voxels” that live at a point in space, rather than “pixels” that live on x and y coordinates on a 2D plane.

Laura has aplomb under pressure, and our business of live events is certain to provide lots of it: political, technical, and logistical alike. We work so hard in this business to deliver the productions that we do.

It’s like warfare, in a way. When you’re in the trenches, battling to survive—survive that moment when the doors open, the audience pours in, the curtain goes up, and everyone expects perfection for the sake of their entertainment pleasure—it’s imperative to be surrounded by the most competent people, and Laura Frank is certainly one of them. But to survive that experience over and over again as those of us in this field must do, that requires something more: that we are surrounded by people who are not only competent, but who are also easy to be with as likable people. So, as I said, Laura Frank is a delightful human.

Madonna’s 2004 Re-Invention Tour

FRANK MICELOTTA, GETTY IMAGES

That doesn’t qualify her for this award, but it sure makes the pleasure of seeing her get it that much greater.

—Soren West, CEO of Atomic Design I first worked with the fabulous Laura Frank in 2000 on a production of Follies at The Belasco Theatre, having been introduced by my associate and friend Philip Rosenberg. The production wasn’t particularly well-received, but it marked the start of a rewarding partnership for me.

We went on to work on several Broadway shows together, including Spamalot, Shrek The Musical, and A Steady Rain.

Throughout the past 15 years of collaboration, the thing I have loved most about working with Laura is her brilliant charm and personality, which make it so much easier to be creative. No techie bullshit, nothing to prove, just calm and thoughtful input to the process of making, not to mention a wicked wit. For me, it is these

qualities that mark Laura out from others.

Coupled with these admirable qualities, she has a technical knowledge second to none, so it makes a winning combination.

It is also worth noting that Laura has joined my team in various capacities, from lighting programmer to media associate, and regardless of the role, her presence in the room is equally rewarding to the artistic venture involved. That is because she goes out of her way to become part of the entire team and, in some magical way, helps everyone working on the show.

It’s certainly true that the more kind and calming influences, like Laura, you have in the room, the more the garden grows.

I have no idea what the future will hold for us, but I’d be prepared to go on any kind of adventure with Laura and feel completely confident of a great experience where we can enjoy giving the best, because that’s what Laura does.

—Hugh Vanstone, Lighting Designer MAY 2016 \\\

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FULL FLOOD Full Flood, a consortium of awardwinning lighting designers and directors of photography who specialize in television and live events, has supported myriad projects since its inception in 1990. In all, the Full Flood team has garnered 24 Emmy Awards and represents over 150 years of industry experience. Ranging from the 1993 Super Bowl Halftime Show featuring Michael Jackson to Conan on TBS, over 25 Academy Awards broadcasts, and Olympic Opening and Closing Ceremonies in Vancouver, Athens, Salt Lake City, and Atlanta, the firm has designed lighting for many of the world’s most celebrated television specials, series, and live events, generally behind the scenes rather than in the spotlight.

Production designer Bruce Rodgers and scenic designer Derek McLane comment on working with Full Flood’s Robert Dickinson and Robert Barnhart as they are honored with a Live Design Award for the best in live broadcast lighting for awards shows and special events.

My career would not be what it is today without Bob Dickinson. He opened many important doors and introduced me to great producers and network executives, 22

KEVIN WINTER, GETTY IMAGES

giving us the chance to do big and exciting projects together. It’s been rewarding to work with both Bob Dickinson and Bob Barnhart after all these years, and I have learned a great deal from them. Along the way, I have gotten to know everyone at Full Flood, and I find the level of professionalism second to none. At the same time, it’s always a fun experience.

I’ve had the honor and privilege to design with both Bobs on multiple live televised events, such as several Super Bowl Halftime Shows, starring Prince, The Who, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Tom Petty, Bruno Mars, Katy Perry, and Coldplay. Other live televised events that we have collaborated on include the 2008, 2012, and the current 2016 Democratic

The 88th Annual Academy Awards

National Conventions as well as President Obama’s Nomination speech at Invesco Stadium in 2008. In every case, I was fortunate to sit next to one Bob or the other and observe calm professional skills mixed with a sense of humor in the midst of sometimes terrifying live television. Congratulations on a well-deserved honor!

—Bruce Rodgers, President of Tribe, Inc. Bob Dickinson and Bob Barnhart are a funny pair. Bob is as enthusiastic as Bob is dry (and if you know them, you will know that Dickinson is the idealist, and Barnhart is the dry one). Both are driven, exacting, and very talented men. They make an incredible, if somewhat unlikely team, each having his own different role, and with Barnhart able to fill both roles when Dickinson is stuck in traffic. I will say that what makes the two of them so indispensable to a project—and I have now done the Oscars with them four times—is their passion to make the show better, not only from a lighting perspective, but also to push the overall quality of the event. They have exquisite taste, and they are never afraid to advocate for the highest quality. I hope I have the good fortune to do many more projects with them.

—Derek McLane, Scenic Designer MAY 2016 \\\

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NATASHA KATZ Theatrical lighting designer Natasha Katz has dedicated her talents to the worlds of theatre, opera, and ballet for over 30 years.

With over 50 Broadway shows under her cap, she has been nominated for 13 Tony Awards, including a 2016 nomination for her work in Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Katz has won five Tony Awards, including last year’s Best Lighting Design of a Musical for An American In Paris.

She is currently represented on Broadway by her work in Aladdin, An American In Paris, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, and School Of Rock The Musical, with Motown The Musical to open in July and a revival of Cats in August. In the world of dance, she often collaborates with choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, including The Winter’s Tale, now at the Royal Opera House until June 10. She has also designed for the New York City Opera and The Royal Opera.

Katz’s colleagues and friends, Thomas Schumacher and Bob Crowley, share a few words on her Live Design Award for sustained achievement in theatrical lighting design.

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We know that my friend Natasha Katz can beautifully light actors (think of those heartbreaking moments of Celia KeenanBolger with her menagerie), enormous sets (those endless vistas in Lincoln Center’s Twelfth Night), and expansive stage floors (the saturated blues in An American In Paris). Magician that she is, Natasha can light the very air; I swear you can see the heat shimmering over the dunes in Aladdin.

I’ve known Natasha for almost 20 years, and Frozen will be our seventh show together. She is a woman of exceptional accomplishment, but to talk to her is to hear only her love of theatre. She’ll talk about the artists who made her better: her mentor Roger Morgan, director Clifford Williams, and, maybe most important, stage wizard Bob Crowley. She’ll passionately remind you of the brilliant women who came before her in lighting: Jean Rosenthal, Arden Fingerhut, and the peerless Tharon Musser. She’ll tell you, “Even if I don’t mean to, all of a sudden, I love the show I’m working on, every time.”

How fitting it is that Natasha receives this award for sustained excellence over her 30 year career; the breadth and

An American In Paris

ANGELA STERLING

variety of her work is simply staggering: 50 Broadway shows, five Tony Awards, and seven additional nominations, and is there a lighting designer in the world whose sheer vibrancy can be ID’d without so much as a glance at the title page?

“Sustained excellence” indeed.

—Thomas Schumacher, President and Producer for Disney Theatrical Group As any self-respecting stage designer knows, his or her work is only as good as it is lit.

I have by now lost count of how many times Natasha has made my work look better by her generous genius.

In her quiet, stealth-like fashion, she sits at her table in the stalls of a theatre or an opera house and sculpts the scenery, the actors, singers, and dancers into three dimensions so that in turn the audience, by ‘seeing’ more clearly, observe, understand, and, as a result, are drawn into the performance. No mean gift.

Like all great things in life and in the theatre, it should look “easy,” by which I mean it doesn’t pull focus and doesn’t draw attention to itself, but by being “right” and appropriate, it illuminates.

Natasha Katz has been illuminating my life and work literally and metaphorically for over 20 years. How lucky am I? Oh, and by the way, she is also one classy lady.

—Bob Crowley, Set and Costume Designer MAY 2016 \\\

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IZABELLA ENGLUND

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S K R O W N G I S E D N SEVE The triumvirate that is Seven Design Works comprises three artists with very different backgrounds. There’s the incomparable LeRoy Bennett, who has been designing shows since he started with Prince in the 1980s, a relationship that lasted three decades, to say nothing of his iconic work with Paul McCartney, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Nine Inch Nails, Kelly Clarkson, and Maroon 5, among others. Then along came Cory FitzGerald, in the biz since the age of 12, making a name for himself as one of the top lighting programmers in the world, often for Bennett, before making his mark as a designer with Bruno Mars, Skrillex, Janet Jackson, Justin Bieber, and Jennifer Lopez, to name a few. And really, what is a top design firm without a Swede? Tobias Rylander, born in Sweden and based in Los Angeles, has soared his way into

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the upper echelon of design achievement in less than a decade, starting on the technical side of the industry and then working with local Swedish bands until he got to take them on international tours, including acts like Lykke Li, Fever Ray, and Miike Snow, and later The xx, Tegan and Sara, Mark Ronson, and Phoenix.

If Trent Reznor is any indication of the talent that flocks to Seven Design Works, and we think he is, the comments from their colleagues are a testament to their design achievement.

Probably my favorite part of the album/touring cycle is brainstorming with Roy about how we can translate the material and intent to the live stage. Roy’s willingness to challenge and rethink the expectations of a live rock show,

Bruno Mars’ 2015 New Year’s Eve Celebration, design by Cory FitzGerald

DENISE TRUSCELLO, GETTY IMAGES

combined with his exquisite taste in lighting and staging, has been instrumental in fulfilling the vision of what I’m trying to pull off. He gets it; he creates a beautiful, emotionally rich world for me to perform in.

—Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails It’s no wonder Roy and Seven Design Works are being given this distinct honor.

When I was conceptualizing our new tour, Roy was the only one for me. He has such an original eye and an uncanny ability to keep reaching in a way that’s not only inspiring but so suited to the artists he works with. For me, he can take an artist to places they never dreamed and bring an audience to new realms they never knew existed.

—Keith Urban Cory’s creativity, aesthetic sense, and lighting designs fulfill and enhance the vision I have as an artist for my live shows and productions. His ingenuity and imaginative energy, coupled with his knowledge of set design, creates a magical aura on stage and builds an atmosphere that brings the music, dancing, costumes, and performance to life.

—Jennifer Lopez MAY 2016 \\\

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MARIAN SANDBERG

We think Roy Bennett needs no badge of honor because what he can do well cannot be singled out with just one honor. His range of achievements from NIN to Beyoncé speaks for itself. The most important thing: Roy fetzt!

—Rammstein I was lucky enough to meet Tobias years and years ago, when we were both dying to get away from Sweden and build something better and more beautiful than what our lives could offer us at that time. Since then, we’ve developed a strong friendship and partnership, and there is not a show I would want to do without him. He is a true star and visionary, making magic out of nothing, always pushing boundaries in the most poetic, simple way. I’m so proud of the world we managed to create and travel in, with light and shadows, dreams and hopes, and, essentially, finally finding our home and place in this world where we can let go and revel in the magic of art.

—Lykke Li, Singer Tobias has become part of our family, a true creative and conceptual collaborator. Tobias is more than a designer for us; he is our friend and ally.

—Jamie Oborne, The 1975 Manager 28

Nine Inch Nails’ Tension Tour, design by LeRoy Bennett

As a group of creatives and professionals, collaboration is something we live for; it is an integral part of our art and our business. We feed off of other people’s energy and ideas, and build unique experiences that may not have been born had we not been open-minded and pushed each other. Roy, Cory, and his team are like-minded. I know that any time we collaborate with Roy, it will be wonderful. He is on the cutting edge of not only tech and product, but also creative, progressive thought. Put simply: We crush when we work together.

—Tim Smith, Skrillex Manager

Roy is an extremely talented guy, who truly helps a performing artist deliver the best presentation possible, all while exceeding whatever you thought was possible. He’s not only a master of design, technology, and a visual artist of the highest order, but also a consummate music fanatic that knows how best to incorporate his expertise into a live music presentation.

—Adam Harrison, Maroon 5 Management The 1975 tour, design by Tobias Rylander

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COVER STORY

AMERICAN PSYCHO TRANSLATES FROM SCREEN TO BROADWAY

PSYCHO KILLER JEREMY DANIEL

/// BY N ATA LIE ROBIN

COVER STORY

I

t’s a hard season to open a new musical, but one is making some waves by tapping into our nostalgia for the cocainesoaked, money-driven days of Wall Street in the 1980s.

American Psycho comes to Broadway at the Schoenfeld Theatre and reminds us that the excess of Manhattan in the 1980s is both very close and very, very far away.

With an evocative and transformational set design by Es Devlin and direction by Rupert Gold, the Broadway production brings together the lighting, video, and sound designers Justin Townsend, Finn Ross, and Dan Moses Schreier, respectively.

Devlin’s set is, essentially, a white cube on stage, which seems to conjure the pristine, superficial world of protagonist Patrick Bateman, but it also forms a palette on which her collaborators can paint the disintegration of that veneer.

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THE AMERICAN PSYCHO COLLABORATION WITH DEVLIN IS A CONTINUATION OF THEIR WORK TOGETHER, WHICH HAS ALSO INCLUDED THE WEST END PRODUCTION OF CHIMERICA.

Most of the music is performed live off of two laptops and Ableton Live.

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COVER STORY

PROJECTING ISSUES Video designer Ross is not new to Broadway; his Olivier- and Tony-winning work was seen in A Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time, one of the most highly recognized projection designs in recent years. The American Psycho collaboration with Devlin is a continuation of their work together, which has also included the West End production of Chimerica. Ross explains that the Broadway production is a big step forward, designwise, from the “off-West End” premiere at the Almeida in London.

“We have a lot more lighting now, a lot more automation, a lot more speakers, a lot more video than we had before,” he says. “There is a whole new piece of scenery that we did not have in London that is so big that it takes five projectors to cover it from all sorts of crazy angles. The Almeida, where we made it in London, is a small 300seat theatre, so very different from the Schoenfeld.”

While the video takes center stage at times, the design for this new production comes out of a fruitful collaboration with the greater design team. The large presence of video wasn’t originally conceived of in the process, but later on, Ross says, “there was a collective realization that a lot more video was going to be needed to help bring out the show’s edge and attitude. At that point, it quadrupled our rate of production and budget.”

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American Psycho features an evocative and transformational set design by Es Devlin.

JEREMY DANIEL

This was exciting and also, of course, intense for Ross and his team. The white cube functions as a projection surface for large sequences in the show, so Ross’ and Devlin’s teams worked closely. “We had to make sure what was being built could be projected on,” Ross say. “There was one piece of scenery that was exceptionally hard to hit with video, so Zach Peletz, our programmer and d3 Technologies system designer, made good use of all the new projection features in the d3 r12 software to work out how to achieve our shots.”

Aesthetically, Ross explains that “to make strong video and lighting looks inside a white box takes a great deal of collaboration and conversation.” The white box presents a number of challenges for

all of the designers. “It is the inside of a white box with very little room other than the open side to get lighting in,” says Ross.

“So wanting a big video look and lighting look at the same time is a difficult thing to achieve, since every moment in a show with over 1,000 lighting cues needs a lot of balancing.” Projectors are all from Panasonic—five PT-DZ8700s, four PT-DZ13KUs, and a PT-DZ21KU, and the projection kit also includes an Avitech Titan Multiviewer, an Adderview CATx KVM switcher, and a Gefen 32x32 Modular Matrix router.

The programming was obviously complicated. Peletz used MIDI show control, MIDI timecode, Art-Net, and OSC for external control of the timeline and certain layer properties and, as Ross explains, “lots MAY 2016 \\\

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COVER STORY

JEREMY DANIEL

SCHREIER WAS BROUGHT ON BOARD BY COMPOSER DUNCAN SHEIK, HAVING ALSO WORKED TOGETHER ON SHEIK’S NEW MUSICAL BECAUSE OF WINN DIXIE.

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JEREMY DANIEL MATTHEW MURPHY

of new d3 labs tricks, like distorting one layer based on another.” The team also used the d3 Distort Module to use displacement maps. Projection also makes use of an ETC Eos Programming Wing. Sound Associates supplied the video and projection gear.

As if that wasn’t enough, Ross and Peletz were also dealing with automation tracking. The scenic design involves two different automation systems, from both PRG and Hudson Scenic, and, as Ross describes, they use the d3 system to “deal with a lot of automation data to move screens around and then faking a lot of other screens, taking in timecode and MIDI show control.”

Ross and LD Townsend had to work very closely together because they share an ETC Eos control system to trigger both lighting and video cues. Sound designer Schreier was also part of this mix. As he

explains, the three departments had to work together “because the sound department became the hub for sending MIDI timecode for syncing elements between all departments via sound’s QLab computer.

And in turn, QLab is being triggered by Ableton Live to coordinate all events with the music.” Peletz elaborates, “We are pulling audio into the d3 servers and doing frequency analysis to have the video be audio reactive to the beat during certain moments of the show.”

In a musical, the nuance of timing can be everything, so they “worked very closely with the musical supervisor to make sure we are all using the latest versions of time codes etcetera so we keep everything on the beat.” Luckily, Ross says that some of the problem-solving was “not always fast, but always fun.”

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SCREAMING AUDIO Schreier was brought on board by composer Duncan Sheik, having also worked together on Sheik’s new musical Because Of Winn Dixie. Schreier’s early process was driven by Sheik’s music, because it is “so specific to a time and a place that it was very important to design the right system to make that part of the music come to life.”

Like the video process, it became much more collaborative for Schreier once the production moved into the theatre. In an unusual move, “most of the music for the show is being performed live off of two laptop computers using Ableton Live,” says Schreier, adding that the collaboration between the sound and music departments was crucial.“Working closely with David Shrubsole, the music supervisor, became extremely important and a true pleasure,” says Schreier. “There has been a constant discussion, whether changes to the music happen at the sound console, with the sound department, or in the Ableton software via the music department.

Depending on what was going on at a

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particular moment in the music or at a particular moment in the show, a decision was determined between the two departments. This was very important to make the show sound fantastic.”

For Schreier, technology was closely tied to the language and aesthetics of the production. “The level of technological complexity was unusually high in the show,” he says. “This was directly tied to the vocabulary of the music being 1980s synth pop or techno.”

The sound gear consists of a DiGiCo SD7T Digital Mixing Console with a theatre software package, with a loudspeaker system comprising d&b audiotechnik speakers and subwoofers and additional Meyer Sound, Genelec, and Anchor speakers. Various amps are all from d&b audiotechnik, and mics are a combination of units from Avalon, Radial Engineering, Schoeps, Sennheiser, and Shure, with wireless mics all from Sennheiser, primarily SK 5212-IIs. Intercoms are from Clear-Com and Riedel. Processing is done via various rack units from XTA Electronics, TC Electronic, Meyer Sound, and Lexicon.

JEREMY DANIEL

COVER STORY

ES IS AMAZING,” TOWNSEND SAYS. “SHE STORYBOARDED EVERY MOMENT, AND IT WAS ALL VERY CLEARLY LIT.

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COVER STORY

Projection design screenshots

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JEREMY DANIEL

LIGHT INTENSITY For Townsend, lighting such an intense musical was thrilling. He came onto the project very late, and it has been a “very fast and exciting time.” Townsend and associate Joel Shier had about two weeks from when they were brought on board to provide complete documentation and only a number of days to turn around the light plot, but, as Townsend explains, the groundwork was already in place.

“Es is amazing,” he says. “She storyboarded every moment, and it was all very clearly lit.” His work was also informed by the existing video design by Ross and his team.

Paired with these other “powerhouse designers,” Townsend says he was ready to “step up to the plate and start swinging.”

American Psycho is the kind of piece Townsend loves to light because of the quick movement back and forth between ‘80s pop musical numbers and operatic-style book scenes. He says, “I love these pieces. It doesn’t sit in a camp of ‘I know exactly what this is.’” He started with a very strong, bold aesthetic and worked to figure out how “to fit big ideas into the rig to get a lot of dynamic range” into the lighting design. “I start being really interested in the architecture, in how the space is assembled, and how it sits in the room,” he says, adding that he analyzes what the space can do well and MAY 2016 \\\

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AMERICAN PSYCHO IS THE KIND OF PIECE TOWNSEND LOVES TO LIGHT BECAUSE OF THE QUICK MOVEMENT BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN ‘80S POP MUSICAL NUMBERS AND OPERATIC-STYLE BOOK SCENES.

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COVER STORY

dynamically providing a number of answers right off the bat. The forced perspective white box of a set has “little slots for side lights and a little hole in the ceiling for lights to poke through” so there weren’t going to be a ton of traditional onstage electrics. Big color ideas were on the table from the start, so the plot evolved into a sharp, clean aesthetic focused on color and direction.

That led to some negotiation around equipment. “Fan noise is a huge problem,” he says. “The set acts as a giant horn.” So quiet LED fixtures were key. Townsend uses GLP impression X4 units for the first time on American Psycho.

“They are really great; the color is great, and they are fast. They have a zoom where they become a little sharp. They are beautiful, soft wash lights.” PRG provided the lighting equipment package, which is made up of mainly X4s and Harman Martin Professional MAC Viper Performance profiles. The slots are packed with Philips Color Kinetics ColorBlast TRX striplights, which can provide a lot of color and intensity. City Theatrical provided custom-made top hats for the Martin Atomic 3000 LED strobes, so that “all over the rig, I can pack these strobe lights in,” says Townsend.

These tools all help him balance a period and modern aesthetic. “I’m really excited about the color use in the white space and the percussive

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use of light,” the lighting designer says. “The rhythm of the piece expresses a kind of ‘80s style in the strobe use.”

Unsurprisingly, the American Psycho design team is busy in the coming months. Devlin was working simultaneously on Beyoncé’s Formation Tour, which just launched last month. Ross is designing The Tempest at the Royal Shakespeare Company in collaboration with Intel and Imaginarium Studios which, he says, “is going to be one of the biggest video shows I have ever done,” as well as a new Frankenstein ballet. Schreier has a number of upcoming composing projects, including a production of

Peer Gynt to be directed by John Doyle, a score for Troilus And Cressida for Daniel Sullivan at the Delacorte Theatre, and a score for longtime collaborator Dan Hurlin’s next puppet project, Destroying Everything At Amazing Speed for Bard SummerScape 2016. Townsend also has an exciting season ahead. He is designing Annie Kaufman-helmed The Sign In Sidney Brustein’s Window at the Goodman Theatre; South Pacific at the Guthrie Theatre, with new artistic director Joseph Haj; and, of course, he is represented on Broadway by the critically acclaimed family drama The Humans, which is right across the street from American Psycho.

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COVER STORY

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COVER STORY

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JEREMY DANIEL

The Broadway production requires five projectors at crazy angles to cover the set with the video designs.

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The groundwork for a lighting plot was already in place by the time Justin Townsend was on board.

Lighting Plot

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FE ATURE

Pharma Rock Riverview Systems Group’s Evan Williams And Franco Berardi On Staging For Zimmer Biomet’s AAOS 2016 Annual Meeting Booth /// BY M A R I A N S A N D B E R G

FE ATURE

The 19,000sq-ft., two-floor exhibit booth featured its own conference rooms and demonstration labs.

L

ast month, Riverview Systems Group and Zimmer Biomet marked their 18th collaboration when they partnered to provide extensive production design services in support of its exhibit presence at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons 2016 Annual Meeting (AAOS) in Orlando, FL. However, calling what Riverview produced merely an “exhibit presence” is a bit of an understatement. In reality, the 19,000sq-ft., two-floor exhibit booth (complete with conference rooms and demonstration labs), with a 48’x16’, six-section automated LED wall that moved together and broke apart, depending on specific content, as well as an

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immense lighting rig, was more akin to something you might see at an arena-sized concert tour.

As Riverview Systems Group CEO Evan Williams notes, “The technology advances and automated elements we incorporated into our approach for the Zimmer Biomet booth this year is more typical of a state-ofthe-art arena-like rock show than what is normally seen on a trade show floor. This is a multifaceted custom booth environment that allows for a seamless and cohesive presentation of brand messages throughout.”

We spoke with Williams and Franco Berardi, Riverview’s director of Design Services, to take a deeper dive into this massive project and the challenges it presented.

AS RIVERVIEW SYSTEMS GROUP CEO EVAN WILLIAMS NOTES, “THE TECHNOLOGY ADVANCES AND AUTOMATED ELEMENTS WE INCORPORATED INTO OUR APPROACH FOR THE ZIMMER BIOMET BOOTH THIS YEAR IS MORE TYPICAL OF A STATEOF-THE-ART ARENA-LIKE ROCK SHOW THAN WHAT IS NORMALLY SEEN ON A TRADE SHOW FLOOR.”

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LIVE DESIGN: Eighteen years is a long time to work with a client.

Talk about your collaborative relationship with Zimmer Biomet and how you keep it fresh creatively year after year.

EVAN WILLIAMS: I think, in a nutshell, that it is simply our passion for the new and interesting. This exhibit has been enormous for 18 years, and Riverview and the technology available have evolved a lot over that time. It’s not really about thinking outside the box, but rather making the box really big.

FRANCO BERARDI: Designing not only what’s cool, but making it purposeful, is the edge we have on others. Our internal ecosystem is set up to support our vision and carry it through to completion, whether it’s a simple show or a complex one like Zimmer Biomet. For me, the thrill of working on this type of creative assignment keeps me excited year after year.

More akin to a state-of-the-art arena-like rock show, the booth also featured an immense lighting rig.

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Riverview Systems Group created a multifaceted custom booth environment for Zimmer Biomet.

LD: What were some of the creative and technical challenges you faced this time around?

FB: Rigging is always the principal technical challenge. Given the design, we needed to hang anywhere from 40 to 50 tons of equipment and scenic elements above the booth space. Because of this, every design is built from the rigging down. All hanging elements of the booth, including lighting, audio, video, and exhibit pieces are taken into account as we build the system. That gives us the control to balance out every aspect visually and experience all elements that make it work as a unified design.

EW: We actually begin work on the next year’s exhibit almost immediately after the current show is over. Due to the enormity of the project, design and budgeting for the next year needs to begin early so we can figure out how to out-do the previous year’s impact. We then discuss the needs and targets with our clients to determine how to best approach a given campaign, support new initiatives, etc. Once that’s evolved, we begin to work with the content, exhibit, and marketing partners to develop what we end up with.

RIGGING

IS ALWAYS THE PRINCIPAL TECHNICAL CHALLENGE. GIVEN THE DESIGN, WE NEEDED TO HANG ANYWHERE FROM 40 TO 50 TONS OF EQUIPMENT AND SCENIC ELEMENTS ABOVE THE BOOTH SPACE. BECAUSE OF THIS, EVERY DESIGN IS BUILT FROM THE RIGGING DOWN...

FRANCO BERARDI

LD: In the past, you likened the Zimmer Biomet booth to creating a theme park. Is that still an apt analogy?

EW: Yes, it is. Although, it might be more

FB: I also call it “Planet Zimmer,” given the

accurate to compare this to recent concert tours from the likes of Bon Jovi or U2. The overall system, including truss and hoists, weighed over 46 tons this year. We provided all of that, as well as all of the lighting, audio/video equipment, and all of the technical support for the AV related needs, and we managed the delivery of the content to the LED walls and displays throughout the exhibit. This year, we added a six-section automated LED wall that moves together and breaks apart depending on content-driven segments. The overall size of the wall was 48’ wide by 16’ tall.

sheer size and scope of it. This year really embodied that feeling not only in size, but the design itself, which was very solar systemlike. Large, sweeping headers throughout the space created a central core of activity, and this area was led by the automated video system delivering the content about Zimmer Biomet products. A two-story structure with conference rooms and a media loft space to hold impromptu meetings with clients, this booth was really a planet of its own.

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FE ATURE

LD: Speaking more broadly, how has the company, and more generally the industry, changed over the years?

FB: In the past, companies looked for great technicians that could use the equipment in a way that amplified their own skill set, but Riverview today takes a more thoughtful approach, building theatrical storylines into our design and using the technology to further the concept. Today, technology is plentiful, but creating designs and executing them flawlessly are what is most important to clients.

EW: You hear it all the time: Content is king. No surprise there, but more often this year than ever before, content is driving production design, rather than the other way around. Clients demand wide aspect ratios and display technologies to fit with their content desires and formats, and we, as solutions providers, have to muster the design acumen and technologies to make it happen. The LED automation on the Zimmer Biomet project exemplifies this trend.

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CONTENT IS DRIVING PRODUCTION DESIGN, RATHER THAN THE OTHER WAY AROUND. EVAN WILLIAMS

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FE ATURE

Text Dance And Light

KEN TABACHNICK ILLUMINATES THE STEPHEN PE TRONIO COMPANY /// BY ELLEN L A MPER T-GRE A U X

FE ATURE

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Stephen Petronio Company in Trisha Brown’s Glacial Decoy, Emily Stone and Cori Kresge

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N

ot all dancers talk as they move, but Stephen Petronio learned from one of the best. He was the first male dancer in the Trisha Brown Dance Company (1979-1986) and noticed that she often spoke while dancing; he also watched enviously as the women in the company performed Brown’s Glacial Decoy, which did not have room for a man. More than 30 years later, as part of his Bloodlines project, in which he plans to add works by major contemporary choreographers to his repertory, Petronio asked Trisha Brown veterans Diane Madden and Lisa Kraus to set the 1979 Glacial Decoy on his company, which performed it in March 2016 at The Joyce Theatre in New York City, after premiering it in Chicago last October.

The original lighting for the Glacial Decoy, which had iconic sets, featuring projected photographs, and costumes by Robert Rauschenberg, was by Beverly Emmons.

Petronio’s resident lighting designer Ken Tabachnick notes that Emmons “came in to look at stage rehearsals at The Joyce and relit the piece.” Lighting supervisor Joe Doran had laid out the plot after conversations with Emmons.

“I toured with the piece in the early ‘80s after working as Beverly’s assistant,” recalls Tabachnick. “My recollection of the instrumentation was that we usually used 2kW Fresnels for the backlight and standard

Stephen Petronio Company in Trisha Brown’s Glacial Decoy, (l to r) Emily Stone and Cori Kresge

ellipsoidals for high-side and head-high boom lighting. At The Joyce, the backlight was ETC PAR strips, which we augmented with a third set in order to have coverage and make sure we were lighting downstage of the screens in Glacial Decoy. The high sidelights and booms were the standard Joyce instrumentation, which is all ETC Source Fours. The color was exactly the same as I remember it from when I toured it.”

Tabachnick notes that one of the important goals was to match the tonality of the lighting to the color of the slides. “As the Trisha Brown Company has changed projector technology, this is a question that has arisen,” he says. “Beverly did not, to my knowledge,

change any colors for this run, but she and I had a very interesting conversation about it in the context of the developing ubiquity of LED-sourced fixtures.”

“The projectors were very tricky,” explains Doran, noting his team had very specific parameters to make the projection work. “Glacial Decoy required rear projection, and The Joyce is a fairly shallow stage.” The projectors used were Panasonic PT-DZ770K—7,000-lumen, 1,920x1,200 resolution, single-chip DLP units—with the Panasonic 0.38 Ultra Short Lens rented by New City Video and Staging on Canal Street. “Jack Young and Nelson Otero were extremely helpful in figuring out the photometrics,” adds Doran.

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FE ATURE

Stephen Petronio Company MiddleSexGorge, Nicholas Sciscione

ROBERT ALTMAN

HE ORIGINALLY DANCED IT AS A SOLO WHILE TALKING, A LA TRISHA BROWN’S ACCUMULATION DANCES. KEN TABACHNICK

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Stephen Petronio Company Big Daddy (Deluxe), (l to r) Nicholas Sciscione, Stephen Petronio, Joshua Tuason

The world premiere on the program was Big Daddy (Deluxe), a work in progress for Petronio; this is the piece in which he speaks about his father. “He has not yet decided if it is dance/theatre, dance with text, or what,” says Tabachnick, who lit this piece. “He originally danced it as a solo while talking, a la Trisha Brown’s accumulation dances. Then he started adding a single dancer, then another, and then he got injured and couldn’t dance. So this version is a response to trying to find a medium that works without him dancing.”

Tabachnick explains that the original concept for the lighting was clear, white presentational lighting on Petronio while he talks, and vivid color on the dancers, “marking a dream world or referential space clearly different from the text and everything we have ever done,” says the LD.

“When we put that on stage, we both hated it and reverted to a simplistic approach. Again, the parts with Stephen talking are designed to be very traditional presentational, hence the spots. The rest is designed to be a generic dance space. The dance cues are all the same except for the transitional opening and moment before the end where Stephen joins the dancers USC.” MiddleSexGorge, the third piece on the program, dates from 1990, and is lit exactly as it was originally except for using The Joyce’s ETC Source Fours instead of the standard incandescent ellipsoidals of 25 years ago. “It is only 12 downlights and eight shins in total, plus the smoke,” notes Tabachnick. “The smoke has changed over the years as OSHA, and other standards have forced changes to the composition and types of smoke acceptable on the stage.

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FE ATURE

EACH YEAR, THE AMOUNT OF MODIFICATION VARIES BASED ON THE INDIVIDUAL DANCES WE ARE DOING. KEN TABACHNICK

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ROBERT ALTMAN

Stephen Petronio Company MiddleSexGorge, (l to r) Jaqlin Medlock, Kyle Filley, Emily Stone

This year, like the original smoke cookies of 25 years ago, we were able to achieve the original concept, which was to ‘physicalize’ the choreographic zones of the dance, which takes place totally on the centerline and the two quarter-lines.”

Tabachnick uses The Joyce rep plot but modifies it as needed.

“Each year, the amount of modification varies based on the individual dances we are doing. Stephen’s plot is quite malleable depending on the rep each year and is not rooted in a core set of systems, though I generally choose from a core set of systems I like,” he explains.

“This year, we added a third set of ETC PAR strips for the backlight, as I noted above. The Joyce only has two sets and they never cover the whole stage. So Glacial Decoy this year gave us a good opportunity to look at adding a third set, which was very successful. Other than the projector for Glacial Decoy, the only other changes—except for breaking some twofers—was to swap out barrels—though I think The Joyce already had them—on the downlights from 36° to 50°. We also added irises—again in house equipment, I believe—to a good number of lights since the MiddleSexGorge downlights and the Big Daddy (Deluxe) specials were size-critical.”

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FE ATURE

WORKING IN TANDEM There is a deep comfort level between the choreographer and lighting designer based on the fact that they have been working together for more than 30 years. They have developed a very close and supportive working relationship that is rooted in their common interests and understandings of how each other thinks. “Generally, Stephen tells me long in advance what the issues he is consid-

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Stephen Petronio Company in Trisha Brown’s Glacial Decoy, Emily Stone and Cori Kresge

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ering or working with are for a piece,” notes Tabachnick. “Since his work is never directly attributable to the idea but is metaphorically related or incited by his idea, this serves really as a broad access point for me into understanding what he is working with.”

Tabachnick generally drops into rehearsal about six to eight weeks in advance of the premiere, when Petronio, as he notes, “is usually in the midst of his

biggest struggle. At this point, he usually has established the vocabulary and is in the process of structuring and building the piece. This is an interactive process with the dancers. So I get to see both what he has made up until that point and watch him ‘struggle’ with whatever is the thing he is working on at that point.

Wherever he is at this point, however, the underlying choreographic structure or direction is completely clear to me, and

I can very quickly offer him a number of suggestions of how to support this, or comment on it, or contrast to it in light, and sometimes supported by visuals. We kick around the broad direction and contexts, and then we go our separate ways.

This will form the basics of the plot we hand in, since plots are due at The Joyce one month in advance of the premiere.”

Tabachnick then checks in with Petronio periodically about how it is

THIS YEAR, WE ADDED A THIRD SET OF ETC PAR STRIPS FOR THE BACKLIGHT, AS I NOTED ABOVE. THE JOYCE ONLY HAS TWO SETS AND THEY NEVER COVER THE WHOLE STAGE.

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FE ATURE

Stephen Petronio Company MiddleSexGorge, (l to r) Jaqlin Medlock, Kyle Filley, Emily Stone

ROBERT ALTMAN

SINCE HIS WORK IS NEVER DIRECTLY ATTRIBUTABLE TO THE IDEA BUT IS METAPHORICALLY RELATED OR INCITED BY HIS IDEA, THIS SERVES REALLY AS A BROAD ACCESS POINT FOR ME INTO UNDERSTANDING WHAT HE IS WORKING WITH. KEN TABACHNICK 70

going after that without dropping by rehearsal. “He always sends me updates of the music, which is generally commissioned,” explains the LD. “The week before or two weeks before our premiere, I will go to rehearsal three times: the first time to see the ‘finished’ piece; the second time to lay out the cues; the third time to refine them and, often, review the placements with the stage manager. After each of these rehearsals, Stephen and I meet to discuss what I am thinking and how he is feeling. Overall, he is very, very hands-off about telling me what to do or how to light it, other than to react to the broad sketch I describe to him.”

After these rehearsals, Tabachnick checks in with Doran about any changes necessary to the light plot and to review focus with him. “We load in on Monday. Joe focuses the plot, and I am always there to oversee and focus specials or new systems for the new piece,” he says. “Either that afternoon or that evening, Stephen will space the new piece on stage with dancers. I will work lighting the piece while they space.

He then runs the piece, and we run the cues. He and I check in to make sure there are no big issues, like there were this year with Big Daddy (Deluxe), when we both hated it. The next morning, the day of the premiere, Stephen will come late morning, and I

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will walk him through the cues. I will have worked that morning to adjust, or as in the case of Big Daddy (Deluxe) this year, relight the piece. After lunch, there is a photo call and then a full run in costume. The show opens that night. He and I check in after the dress and first performance to see if there are any tweaks needed.”

For Tabachnick, “the long and short of all of this, is that we have such an understanding of each other and how we work that we have pretty minimal communication around the lighting and more of our discussion is about choreographic issues, audience perception issues, and structure.”

Next up for Petronio is Ally, a collab-

ROBERT ALTMAN

Stephen Petronio Company in Trisha Brown’s Glacial Decoy, Cori Kresge and Emily Stone

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oration with Janine Antoni and Anna Halperin, that is installation, exhibit, and performance at the Fabric Museum in Philadelphia. It premiered this month and runs through July. The company then has performances in Pittsburgh in May, where they perform the Bloodlines’ Rainforest from Merce Cunningham along with two Petronio pieces, and at American Dance Festival in June, when they are performing both Bloodlines dances in Petronio’s repertory to date: Rainforest and Trisha Brown’s Glacial Decoy. It’s great to see these pieces preserved and passed on to the next generation, with the original lighting design intact, albeit updated.

Stephen Petronio Company MiddleSexGorge, (l to r) Jaqlin Medlock, Joshua Tuason, Davalois Fearon, Nicholas Sciscione

YI-CHUN WU

Stephen Petronio Company Big Daddy (Deluxe)

MAY 2016 \\\ ROBERT ALTMAN

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DS: Edge of Beam at CC. IRIS: 8'-9" Wide Should Coordinate with Channel 222. Not identical focus, but SL and SR should be lined up.

PIECE: BIG DADDY DELUX FOCUS CHARTS 3/11/16 DESIGN BY: KEN TABACHNICK DRAWN BY: JOE DORAN

Onstage Edge of Leg

Shins are Sharp Focus!

Cut on Bottom to Cntr. Line Cut on Top to Opposite Border at Leg Cut US off Back Drop and DS to Portal

C L All Downlight fixtures to be Profile or PC Spots. Units must be centered on Center Line and SL and SR 1/4 line of each wing. Do not make any shutter cuts. Do not make focus too soft. Shins must be Profiles.

MiddleSexGorge Focus

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HEATHER GILBERT

In Love With Lights

HEATHER GILBERT

/// BY DAV I N A P OLEON

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Esperanza Rising

MAY 2016 \\\

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eather Gilbert has designed lights in top regional theatres in the U.S., in every major Chicago venue, and as far away as Singapore. Wherever she works, she has surprised colleagues with the variety of equipment she uses. “If it turns on and emits light, it’s a tool I can use,” says the Chicago-based designer.

“She will get excited about a lightbulb and the color temperature it casts,” says director Jonathan Berry.

“She buys lights she’s excited by and keeps them in her apartment. She loves seeing the world through the spectrum of lighting and will still stop everything to look at how the sun comes through the window at a particular time of day.”

Scenic designer Tom Burch is impressed by “her uncanny ability to find and evoke artistry with mundane items, instruments, and sometimes equipment that is older than Methuselah. She can spin on a dime and design a well-budgeted rock ‘n’ roll spectacular with Dee Snider, then end up in a tiny storefront working with clip lights and duct tape, and then head off to the Goodman Theatre and create something intimate and realistic with a union crew,” he says.

“One of the things I like in the directors I work with most is their ability to get the best out of me,” Gil-

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bert says. She credits actor-director David Cromer not only for contributing to her understanding of people and characters, but also for pushing her to make the ordinary special. “We used only a candle and nothing else [for a scene] in our production of A Streetcar Named Desire at Writers Theatre and Williamston.

We started the ‘Will You Light My Candle’ scene in Rent with just a candle and slowly reinforced it.”

Gilbert lit Cromer’s Our Town, the acclaimed production that originated at The Hypocrites Theatre in Chicago in 2008 and then moved to New York for a 19-month run before going to Los Angeles, Boston, Kansas City, and London, with incandescent light bulbs. “She knew, and the director knew, that they didn’t need theatrical instrumentation. They wanted an open theatre, playing space look. She had no ego.

For Heather, it’s always about serving the play and not what’s going to make her look good,” says Burch, scenic designer for the show.

But Gilbert can also get big effects from simple tools. Music director Andra Velis Simon says Gilbert made a production of American Idiot, done with a small budget in The Hypocrites Theatre’s black box, “look like a badass rock concert in a huge arena.”

The Mikado

HEATHER GILBERT

Change The World

ALISON SIPLE

Everything Is Illuminated

MAY 2016 \\\ MICHAEL BROSILOW

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Change The World

ALISON SIPLE

She also enjoys using contemporary lighting. “I was super anti-LED for the longest time.

Now I’m in love with them,” says the designer with obvious delight.

It’s not only good for the environment, she notes, but it gives her so many more tools. “LEDs can be white or colored front light, a red wash or a blue one. It frees up the dimmers to be able to have more control over systems or to add more lights that have to be dimmed. It’s exponential how much more equipment we get from the use of LEDs, and the quality has gotten better and better. It’s like living on the edge of an electrical revolution,” she says.

Although she had used LEDs occasionally at Hypocrites, it wasn’t until she designed Berry’s production of Side Man at American Blues Theatre that she realized their full potential. The production, she says, “opened my eyes to LEDs and changed my world. Suddenly, I could use a limited amount of equipment and transform the world.”

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The Mikado

HEATHER GILBERT

Change The World

ALISON SIPLE

TELLING STORIES WITH LIGHT When Gilbert designed lights for Floyd Collins, about a man trapped inside a cave, the team couldn’t put a cave on stage, so lights became the set. Velis Simon says Gilbert’s design gave spectators the impression Collins was going through passageways underground. “Collins hallucinates as he is near death that he has been rescued, underscored by a big, bright, joyous musical number. But then the music pauses, and he comes back to his reality, remembering where he is, and realizing he is not going to make it out,” says Velis Simon, adding that what Gilbert did with the lights surprised her. “If the stage were a person, you would say the blood drained from his face.

It wasn’t sudden. You saw the color drained away, and you felt the emotional impact because she is so good at tying together the music and the lights.”

Esperanza Rising is a large-cast children’s play that moves swiftly through 35 locations. When Burch designed Henry Godinez’s production for Chicago Children’s Theatre at the Goodman Theatre, he kept the set somewhat basic and stark.

“Yet Heather managed to sculpt the space

in such a way that the play flowed through her lighting. It was poetic, at times subtle, at times harsh, and yet it felt as if the play was breathing through her lighting,” says Burch.

When director Devon de Mayo did Everything Is Illuminated, she was taken by an effect at the end of the production that called for stars shining “brighter and brighter.” De Mayo says Gilbert avoided clichés and instead used a huge variety of lightbulbs, some colored, some carved glass.

“There was a lot of variety. She very slowly burned the lightbulbs to a beautiful bright wash. You couldn’t walk out of that play and not mention that lighting.”

But often, Gilbert’s designs are remarkable because audiences don’t notice them. “Her work is often so subtle and so perfectly fitted to the world of the text that it’s seamless. She can do showy, but she has an uncanny ability to sculpt a stage with light, and in such a way, so the audience doesn’t know their emotions are being played with,” says Burch. Adds sound designer Thomas Dixon, “She makes light coming in from a window feel so real and immediate and tell the story in specific ways that I didn’t think were possible.”

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Esperanza Rising THE VERY MODEL OF A MODERN LD “Heather and I have known each other for a really long time socially,” says Cromer.

Back when they were both midcareer, just starting to get jobs that paid, Cromer hired her for the first time for a commercial job—a new stage version of Miracle On 34th Street pre-show Christmas songs—and an accident inspired a lighting moment he still remembers.

“We were sort of making it up as we went along,” says Cromer. In tech, when they were going into Act Two with Ella Fitzgerald’s “Jingle Bells” playing, something went wrong with a moment they programmed. “It was supposed to fade down. Instead, it bonked halfway down. The bonk happened to occur near a horn blast in the music. It was late in tech, and everyone else said, ‘That’s one more mistake.’ Here’s the thing: Heather and I went, ‘That’s really cool. Let’s retime it so it actually does that on the horn blast.’ So we synced it up and found a moment. It was surprising, and it got a laugh.

It felt sophisticated and coordinated. It was an accident, but not shit that happened. Accidents are where you find stuff,” says Cromer, who has worked with Gilbert on shows he feels have more artistic merit, and that same spirit of adventure pervades.

Video of Jonathan Berry’s production of Side Man 82 HEATHER GILBERT

Esperanza Rising

HEATHER GILBERT

Sean Graney is another director Gilbert works with regularly, sometimes on productions for children that allow them to be “super bold. We take the lessons we learned in children’s theatre and apply them to adult work,” he says. Designing for children taught her “not to be afraid to go after an idea fully, whether a color or angle, with total respect for the audience and their experience. [A villain in] a big red room can [create] a huge visceral experience in Gilbert and Sullivan,” Gilbert says.

Gilbert designed three Gilbert and Sullivan productions for Graney that redefine what the operettas are. “We don’t change the story or the music,” says Gilbert, noting that instrumentation consists of spoons as well as a guitar and banjo. “The way I see it, we’re doing to Gilbert and Sullivan what they did to classical music. They made it popular; now we make it popular for our day. We add contemporary jokes and change the language. Productions of The Mikado, Pirates Of Penzance, and H.M.S. Pinafore that originated at The Hypocrites

have been transferred to non-profit theatres across the country, sometimes separately, sometimes in rep. Gilbert adapts her designs for each space. “Some of the audience is in the physical space with the actors and has to be mobile,” she says, adding that those who want traditional seating can find it.

This means the audience becomes part of Gilbert’s palette, and they experience one of her considerations; she is always wary of blinding them.

Gilbert came into the project after the original production of Pirates to design the second two shows. When she was on tour with them, Jared Moore, the LD for Pirates, had to step out, and she found herself reconfiguring the lighting for all three shows in a new space. Tom Burch, scenic designer for all, says Gilbert created a complete plot in 12 hours, drawing from what Moore did in Chicago while making it work in a very different space. She subsequently designed lights for Graney’s latest, Yeomen Of The Guard, currently running at Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

MAY 2016 \\\

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LEARNING THROUGH TEACHING Gilbert’s grandmother studied theatre in New York in the 1930s, and Gilbert grew up seeing plays and loving it. “I love actors,” she says. “Getting to light these unbelievable creatures is really special to me.”

But there’s nothing quite like being in a room with other lighting designers—students as well as colleagues.

“There is a definite portion of what we do that happens by ourselves, sitting at a computer, putting together my tools,” she reflects. Being in a room with her students at Columbia College Chicago, where she has headed the lighting program since 2006, gives her more than a sense of community—it has opened her eyes to new possibilities.

“One year, a crazy bunch of dudes—they were all dudes—were all into concerts. They were all willing to read texts, but they loved concerts,” she recalls. “I loved intimate venues with a band five feet from you, and I just didn’t care about production values.”

Still, she felt obliged to explore concert lighting to make the program work for these students; in the process, she discovered something new that worked for her. Thinking about rhythm and color combinations gave her ideas for work she was doing in theatre and led to working in “the entire world of live performance.” She has come to love watching audiences respond to the flash of light that accompanies a musical moment.

“My design work got so much better when I started problem-solving with students,” she adds. “I have to come up with ways to get them to come up with ideas. Talking them into a discovery hones your creativity.”

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Our Town at Almeida Theatre in London MARC BRENNER

Our Town at Almeida Theatre in London HEATHER GILBERT

Pirates Of Penzance

HEATHER GILBERT

A Streetcar Named Desire JANNA GIACOPPO

A Streetcar Named Desire

Gilbert’s students sometimes assist her on professional productions, and she occasionally designs an academic show.

Jacqueline Penrod, who teaches scenic design at Columbia College Chicago, often team-teaches with Gilbert, modeling a collaborative relationship as they talk about how lighting affects scenery. “The students really respond well to her,” says Penrod. “She’s passionate about the work.”

Jessica Harpenau was a sophomore when Gilbert began at Columbia.

Before, Harpenau felt she mainly was mastering technical skills; after, she learned the importance of the LD in the conversation. “We get pushed aside behind set design and costume design, which often happen first. Heather showed us we should be in the conversation early and have a conversation not just about the design but about the characters and why the play is important,” says Harpenau, adding that Gilbert teaches students to analyze texts before making technical decisions or thinking about budget.

Harpenau says Gilbert has gone to bat for women as well as for students.

“I feel passionately about making sure women are represented in the design world,” says Gilbert, the recipient of Chicago’s 3 Arts Award in 2012. Gilbert loves the work-centered life she leads but wishes women with families had opportunities to work, too. “The hours are rough on all designers who have children but it’s particularly tough on sound and lighting designers.” And for the theatre world, it means “we’re not getting all the voices at the table.”

Another video of Side Man MAY 2016 \\\

MICHAEL BROSILOW

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A Streetcar Named Desire

MICHAEL BROSILOW

Our Town at Barrow Street Theatre in New York HEATHER GILBERT

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LIGHTING UP THE ROOM After graduating from Trinity University in San Antonio, Gilbert did an internship at the Alley Theatre, staying for a second season to work as an electrician. There, she worked on Jose Quintero’s Our Town, which Kevin Rigdon lit. By the time Gilbert moved to Chicago to study with John Culbert at the Theatre School at DePaul University, Rigdon was working at Steppenwolf. Gilbert began assisting him, but most of her income those days came from bartending.

She must have made a great bartender. “Aside from being a great collaborator who’s always willing to keep working and making adjustments to make things better, she’s a really great person if you’re having some other issues in your life,” says Dixon.

“She’s there for you in so many ways.”

Gilbert wears a tiara to techs. “There are little rubber duckies on her lighting board, also wearing tiaras,” says Dixon.

“When it gets stressful and things are going wrong, you look at her and you feel everything’s fine. We’re all in this together.”

“Even though that’s her crunch time, she makes tech fun and an open, loving experience for the people around her,” says Burch. “She creates community wherever she goes. Crews around Chicago clamor to work with her.”

She’s good to be around before techs, too. When de Mayo is stressed out about budget, for instance, she says it helps to turn to look at Gilbert. “She has an amazing sense of humor and brightness of personality.”

Velis Simon finds that many LDs do not collaborate with music directors to the same extent they do with sound designers. Gilbert is an exception. “Heather enjoys crafting moments together. In a

A Streetcar Named Desire

JANNA GIACOPPO

Yeomen Of The Guard

lot of techs, the lighting designer and music director are working separately,” Velis Simon says. “With Heather, there’s a lot more questions back and forth. Do we hear the music first and then see the sunrise or see the sun and then hear the music? She is so happy to be in the conversation together.”

“She makes me better, and makes the play better, and insists that the production hold itself to a higher standard. And when I try to get away with the lazy or expedient choice, she holds my feet to the fire and insists we continue to work for a solution,” Berry says.

“I love her for her enthusiasm. After all this time, after all these productions, her capacity to still find unencumbered joy, every day in the work, is rare indeed. The fact that she is teaching this now to students is a legacy that the theatre community will be the beneficiary of for a long time to come.”

Says Harpenau, “She brings so much energy into the room. She lights up every room she’s in.”

David Cromer’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire MAY 2016 \\\

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LIGHTING

CONTROL ETC EOS VERSION 2.3 COLOR SOFTWARE

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he Eos family of consoles is not entirely new, sure, but ETC’s latest release of software has created such a buzz that our judges felt it worthy of distinction, one calling it “just the tip of the iceberg” in controlling color. The update essentially provides a new toolbox for fast and simple color mixing and selection, complete with color-control options and a wide range of features that allow users to more readily adapt workflows. “I get better tools to manipulate color fades, and if I choose not to worry, the console just does a better job for me,” says a judge. “It turns out that many of us have used color for a long time but don’t really ‘understand’ it and so appreciate help, particularly when it comes to the possibilities of complex multi-emitter LED sources.”

ETCCONNECT.COM

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LIGHTING LUMINAIRE SGM G-1 BEAM

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t’s fully waterproof. It can be battery-powered. It features wireless DMX. It’s the SGM G-1 Beam, and one judge calls it “a truly innovative technical advance.” High contrast, rapid movement, and super bright, with up to 12 hours of operation under battery power, and new, patent-pending position preset programming, the G-1 has so many features our judges praise. One simply says, “I love this light. It’s a clever fixture that has great uses for many applications.” Another adds, “One of the most innovative fixtures on the market, and SGM is one of the few companies that are making headways in environmental innovations within our industry, solving the inevitable problems that come along with fixtures being placed out in the elements.”

SGMLIGHT.COM

LUMINAIRE GLP IMPRESSION X4 BAR

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eems like everyone makes a bar of some sort, but not all bars are created equal. Take the impression X4 Bar 10 and impression X4 Bar 20 from German Light Products (GLP). It does so much, in fact, that our judges wanted to consider it as a fully featured luminaire, not a cyc or accent light. “You can use it to light a cyc, of course, but what’s much more interesting to me is its use as a replacement for a light curtain and other ‘solidwall-of-linear-light’ type effects,” says a judge. “It does that very well, and it’s already starting to appear in shows being used for exactly that purpose. It’s not just a hightech cyc light.” Another adds, “What a great idea to package all of these features into a linear form factor, providing a lot of great opportunities for innovative design.”

GERMANLIGHTPRODUCTS.COM MAY 2016 \\\

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LIGHTING EFFECT AYRTON MAGICDOT-R

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agicDot-R is a member of Ayrton’s Radical product line and the first LED of its kind with a single optical collimator. It’s a little guy—“fun and unique,” says one judge—that packs a lot of punch and can really move. The fixture is based around a 60W RGBW multi-chip LED emitter paired with a 94 mm high-efficiency collimator. Another judge says, “The MagicDot-R puts a refreshing effect fixture into the designer’s palette.

Its lightning fast movement, repeatable positioning, and full 360° rotation make this one of the most unique fixtures to have been brought to market in years. It opens the door to many great design ideas.”

AYRTON.EU MORPHEUSLIGHTS.COM

FOLLOWSPOT PRG GROUNDCONTROL™ FOLLOWSPOT SYSTEM

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roundControl is “game-changing,” according to our panel of judges. It’s a simple idea: a remote-controlled followspot, taking away “the antisocial nonsense of climbing a truss,” says a judge. The operator can be in a remote location—2,000’ away, in fact—and operate a PRG Bad Boy® Spot automated luminaire as a followspot. It doesn’t just provide flexibility of putting a spot where you want, it also has massive implications for the safety of operators who are normally up in the rig. The system comprises three parts: a Remote Spot Luminaire, a GC Truss Box, and a GC Followspot Controller. One of our judges applauds it, “not just because the product/functionality now exists, but because it’s actually also very well done.”

PRG.COM

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DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING FOCUSRITE REDNET MPR8

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ocusrite has some serious pedigree in the world of digital signal processing (DSP), dating back to the 1980s and the designs of Rupert Neve, working with no less than Sir George Martin. Perhaps better known historically in the recording side of the biz, the company has evolved to produce professional sound products for various markets. RedNet is its flagship range of modular Ethernet-networked audio interfaces, using Audinate Dante to “make the show sound like the album,” a request the company says is ever-present. The MPR8 eight-channel remote-controlled mic pre and A/D converter is “another triumph,” says one of our judges, with another adding that the “RedNet units are some of the bestselling and most trusted, best-sounding Dante interfaces out there.”

FOCUSRITE.COM

AMPLIFIER D&B AUDIOTECHNIK D20

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he D20 amplifier comprises the same platform as the latest d&b amplifiers, with configurations for all d&b loudspeakers except the J-Series and the M2 monitor, plus a linear mode.

“The D20 has amazing power, versatility, processing, and connectivity in a small box,” says one judge. “No need for a 30-amp circuit to power it, like the D80.”

Suitable for mobile and installation applications that require low or medium SPL, the D20 is being called another “game changer, specifically in the theatre market,” with another judge noting that “d&b has been making great products and driving circles around other manufacturers on built-in processing.

Four channels of clean amplification with integrated DSP, analog and digital inputs, and programmable via a network? Yes, please!”

DBAUDIO.COM MAY 2016 \\\

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SOUND SPEAKER SYSTEM MEYER SOUND LEOPARD

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eyer Sound introduced the Leopard™ compact linear line array loudspeaker, touting it as “Linearity of Leo at Its Smallest. And Lightest.” One judge notes its flexibility as “workable in a multitude of applications,” suitable for mid-sized touring but also theatre, houses of worship, and performance venues, and for any type of musical genre. A major win here is the system sound quality users have come to expect from Meyer in its small form factor: An array of six Leopard speakers with two corresponding 900-LFC low-frequency control elements can be flown with a ½ ton motor. Another judge simply says Leopard is a “no-brainer” as a Product of the Year.

MEYERSOUND.COM

WIRELESS LECTROSONICS SSM

“

The SSM will become a touchstone product in our industry,” says one judge of Lectrosonics’ micro belt-pack transmitter. “It is ideal in theatrical settings or for any other production where concealment in costuming is required.” It is super small, but the transmitter offers a massive feature set and compatibility with a range of RF receivers. “The Lectro unit itself might not make huge headway into the Broadway market as many shops are deeply invested in other brands already, but you can guarantee they are looking to compete with it,” notes one judge about the current market. “We’ll buy some for an upcoming capital purchase for insertion in wigs, double micing of leads, and more. Lectrosonics’ stuff sounds amazing, costs a lot less, and this is tiny, itty-bitty.” Another judge calls it “very cool and extremely enticing.”

LECTROSONICS.COM

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PROJECTION PROJECTOR CHRISTIE BOXER 4K30

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his new projector proves that size matters, but smaller is better. It comes in a tight package with six light sources and redefines the large-format projector into a smaller, compact product. One of our judges calls it a “game changer in cost-per-lumen and resolution,” and its form factor gives you the option to put high-output projectors in places you couldn’t before because of size, heat, or weight. It’s also light enough to be lifted into place by two people. Another of our judges used them on a recent project and reports that “they were super awesome,” while rumor has it they are being used on some pretty major theme park attractions.

CHRISTIEDIGITAL.COM

SOFTWARE D3 TECHNOLOGIES D3 R12

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3 r12 represents a significant advance for the platform, with two major new features, Dynamic Blend and BlackTrax Integration, allowing designers to project video content onto moving projection surfaces from multiple projectors. The new Universal Crossfade allows smooth dissolves from any part of the timeline to any other, and a raft of new content management features allow faster, smoother handling of multiple content versions, proxies, and frame replacement. “This is cool as it allows content creators to replace small sections of files, rather than having to re-render them entirely,” says one of our judges. Combined with a much more efficient graphical shader system under the hood, direct control of matrix routing without the need for preset programming, r12 is the most powerful version of d3 yet.

D3TECHNOLOGIES.COM MAY 2016 \\\

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PROJECTION LED PROCESSOR VER REVOLUTION DISPLAY M8

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ER Revolution Display M8 is a new evolution of a critical component, the LED processor, for realtime 4K LED video distribution. So often the source of frustration in configuring the complex screen displays commonly used in today’s designs, LED processors are the key to quickly placing content in the right place, in the best color space, and at the highest quality. The Revolution Display M8 is a native 4K LED processor from VER that offers deep and intuitive control for configuring a wide range of LED products. As attests one of our judges, it is “a true power tool that can strip hours out of the production process and make every pixel shine.”

VERRENTS.COM

LENS BARCO EN57

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he Barco EN57 ultra short-throw projector lens takes high-quality, large-screen imaging to the next level. This low-distortion, all-glass lens offers high-quality large-screen projection from a revolutionary short distance. Offering the world’s shortest throw ratio (0.28:1), you can create a much larger image or a more compact installation. This lens allows you to increase your image size with 263% or shorten your projection distance with 62%. “The benefits of a lens like this are going to change options for designers working in demanding theatrical environments, as well as those putting together permanent installations in places where throw distance doesn’t exist,” says our lens-minded judge.

BARCO.COM

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HIVE MIND

Hive Mind Joe Paradise Creates A Beehive Rig For 311’s Biennial Unofficial Holiday Concert /// BY MEGH A N PERK INS

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o some, March 11 is just like any other day, but every other year, the 11th day of the third month becomes an unofficial holiday for the fans of alternative rock band, 311, which has held a biennial, twoday event called 311 Day since 2000. The ninth rendition of the event took place at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans on March 11 and 12, with production design by Joe Paradise, who celebrated his fifth 311 Day with the band. Bobby Grey assisted Paradise for his third 311 Day.

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LOADOUT ///

HIVE MIND

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“It’s a special event for the band and their fans, as it only comes around once every two years,” says Paradise. “Fans come from all over the world, and I always want these shows to leave them with something to remember.” This year’s event was impressive to say the least, catering to 15,000 fans who clamored for 311’s 86-song set, which was accompanied by I-Mag, lasers, hazers, and a massive, beehive-shaped rig.

As 311’s touring designer for eight years, Paradise has earned the band’s trust and confidence in creating a striking design. Band members mentioned that they would like to see some of the album artwork reflected in this year’s design, and this supplied the foundation for Paradise’s over-stage rig. The beehive design was a direct nod to the artwork for the band’s latest album release, 311 Archive, a 4-disc compilation of 81 tracks, from unreleased songs to preproduction recordings, spanning from 1992 to 2014.

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LOADOUT ///

HIVE MIND

“We really wanted a classic, big rock ‘n’ roll feel to the rig, something that could be a bit overwhelming to the audience at times yet not upstaging the band,” Paradise explains. The rig comprised eight hexagonal pods of toned truss, arranged in a honeycomb formation. “We made it as wide and as deep as possible so we could let the audience feel like they were not only attending but were a part of the show.”

JIMMY CANNON

Rigged in the beehive were Clay Paky Sharpy Wash fixtures for a solid color base on stage and for keylight from downstage, Clay Paky Sharpy units for effects, Elation Professional Platinum Spot 35R Pro units as the main spots of the show, Eurolite PMC-16 NSP 4x4 LED fixtures arranged in a grid, and a complement of Harman Martin Professional Atomic 3000 strobes.

JIMMY CANNON

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LOADOUT ///

HIVE MIND

Clay Paky Alpha Beam 1500 units lined the upstage walkway of the arena’s club level to provide solid beams with color mixing and long throw abilities. Lined along the upstage wall, Eurolite 4x4s were used as blinders, wash lights, strobes, and pixel-mapped effect lights.

Elation Professional Platinum Spots were also hung on four 20’ wings that were offstage left and right, projecting custom gobos upstage onto the gray fabric in the seats of the house. “I believe part of what makes the shows that Joe designs great is his keen ability to use color to build the show and create the appropriate moods,” says Grey.

JIMMY CANNON

AG Production Services supplied the lighting equipment, and Paradise and Grey spent nine days at AG’s Las Vegas shop preprogramming the thousands of cues for the 80+ song event on an MA Lighting grandMA2 console using MA Lighting’s MA3D visualization software.

A Madrix control system was used for pixel-mapping and sound-to-light effects.

“The sound-to-light effects made the band’s extended jam solos really pop and create an immersive, singular experience actually created by the music on the fly,” says Grey.

104 JIMMY CANNON

The design team ran into few challenges onsite. “I call spot as well as run most of the punted songs, which can become a handful as the guys go back and forth a lot vocally and are only lit when they’re singing. Luckily, I’ve spent enough time doing it that it flows naturally,” explains Grey, who has worked with the band for four years.

MATTHEW WORLMAN

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Grant Sellars from Strictly FX assisted with laser design. “He is known across the industry as one of the best,” Grey states. “He really did an excellent job.” Charles Lucia from Practical FX worked with the pyrotechnics and cryo for the show. HazeBase hazers were positioned on stage, upstage in the seating area, and at FOH. Robert “Junior” Jones was crew chief for the show, working with technicians Alex Parayuelos and Mike Gallagher.

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The design team built the light plots in Vectorworks Spotlight, and Paradise checked angles and sight lines in Martin ShowDesigner. “Deciding trim and rake of the overhead trusses while not encroaching on the other parts of the design was a bit of an unanswered question until load in,” explains Paradise, who was happy to find it worked well in the end.

JIMMY CANNON

LIGHTING GEAR LIST

20 Harman Martin Professional MAC 101 RGB 21 Clay Paky Sharpy Wash 40 Clay Paky Sharpy 42 Elation Professional Platinum Spot 35 Pro 26 Clay Paky Alpha Beam 1500 41 Eurolite PMC-16 NSP 4x4 LED 13 Harman Martin Professional Atomic 3000 2 MA Lighting grandMA2 Console Madrix Control System

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Paradise and Grey also took significant time to work with the I-Mag team from Pyramid to balance keylight levels and color as well as the screen’s intensity and tone. “We try to find the balance between what’s on screen and the room looking good,” Grey clarifies. “A little bit of extra time in this area always pays off.”

JIMMY CANNON

“‘Big’ and ‘special’ were the two main goals for this show,” says Paradise of the band’s unofficial holiday. Indeed, this year’s biennial, two-day show, featuring an especially big, beehive rig, certainly met those goals, and then some. Mark your calendars now: You know where you’ll want to be March 11, 2018.

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Lighting Plot 1

Lighting Plot 2

Lighting Plot 3

save the dates!

october 17-23, 2016 • exhibits: october 21-23, 2016 • las vegas

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