Anything Goes — Front of House

The main constraint with this lighting design was the consideration of the rigging positions in the Alban Arena .  I had been warned against trying to move too much front of house. There are three usable rows of access holes. Nearest the stage are a row of eight holes each able to take a single lantern. The centre two are taken up with a trapeze frame supporting  a selection of microphones. Underneath this I rigged another trapeze to hold a pair of HELL ripple machines. Please see the Effects section for more details. The remaining holes housed PAR 64s. The next row had three holes able to house 6, 8 and 6 lanterns respectively. The last row contained 5 holes each able to take 2 lanterns.

 

The design called for a warm and cold wash in three areas across the stage. In addition to this there is a selection of stronger colour washes to help to pick up the costumes. There are also a number of specials:

 

Moon’s Cabin

Whitney’s Cabin

Signer’s Special

Orchestra lights

 

Two followspots were used. Unfortunately the in-house spots had no dimming capability other than a blackout card. This made intensity control very difficult. The spots were used with a warm and cold colour option. They also had a sheet of Lee 257 diffusion, which gave an option of a soft edge. This soft edge was used in most scenes.

 

Lee lighting gels were used throughout and their colour numbers are shown in the rectangles on the design. Lighting circuit numbers are shown in ovals.