Ring of Fire: The Story of the Songs of Johnny Cash

The arrival of March will bring with it the opening of Ring of Fire, the new musical based on the songs written and performed by Johnny Cash and the evocative stories those songs tell. The show’s premise revolves around the telling of these stories and how the smaller vignettes tell a larger overarching story in and of themselves. To bring the now-immortal songs of Cash to life, projection designer Michael Clark and lighting designer Ken Billington have created a stage environment to match the versatility of the lyrics and the wide range of both emotional and physical space that the characters must go through along their journeys. I recently spoke with the creative team behind this show to find out how they ignited this Ring of Fire.

All Aboard
The story of this show is literally in the songs. Johnny Cash wrote songs about what he knew, his life experiences, and each song tells a complete story. “The songs tell huge stories in two to three minutes. If you know the song ‘A Boy Named Sue,’ that alone could be its own Broadway musical,” says Billington. With more than 1,500 songs recorded by Cash, and 1,000 of them considered for the show, creator and director, Richard Maltby, Jr., selected 38 to be in the final version. Using these songs, he was able to show how the story of each song was part of a larger journey. The story that evolved from the selected songs about a country family brings the music to life on stage, allowing for an abstract and amorphous plot. There are no character names, but implied relationships that connect each segment to the mythology of Cash.

To commence this “train ride,” the show begins with the recently recorded song “Hurt,” originally recorded by Nine Inch Nails and recorded by Cash on his last album, The Man Comes Around. It is an extremely powerful song about a man looking back through his life, which prepares the audience for the journey they are about to undertake. While the story told by this song is not the life of Johnny Cash, it does, at times, resemble it and captures his thoughts and feelings.

Pixel Wrapping
To create this travelogue of Cash’s life, an extremely versatile set was required, not only to take the characters to the variety of different worlds they would inhabit, but also to give a visual depth to the scope of the music. The “set” is simply a series of wooden frames serving as portals with a wooden stage deck, all supporting four large connected high-res LED video walls. The screens are actually four blocks that act as a single screen, and they can track downstage, separate and hinge together at an angle. The wall is made from 60 Daktronics Pro Tour 8 video tiles in a 5- by 12-foot configuration, which makes the size of the full screen approximately 9 by 20 feet. “The size of the screen was important. We wanted to be able to make the stage intimate, and at times, feel about the size of a room,” says Clark. When the screens track downstage, they hinge together to create an obtuse “V,” which also helps to wrap the video in a way that makes the set feel more like a 3-D room, rather than just a video image. The content on the screen was controlled with a Watchout system, which split the full wall into two separate 1,024 by 768 images that could be seamlessly blended and manipulated.

The screen was primarily used as an extremely flexible painted cyc which could morph and change into any image imaginable. “We could have done anything we wanted, but we wanted to keep the quality of a painted scenic drop,” explains Clark. As all the designers and director agree, the success of the design’s implementation rested on the restraint each of them used when applying their craft to the show. “We probably ended up using about 20% of the technology we had,” says director Maltby.

As Billington explains, “The video is so restrained, it’s magical. It allows the show to remain focused on the company and the material.” By holding off on using all the tricks they had to offer, both Clark and Billington were able to subtly yet continuously give the audience something new to look at and work with the material to also help bring out its meaning.

The first incarnation of this show opened in Buffalo, N.Y., with a similar look and feel to the current production. As Billington points out, “We lost about 15 feet from the screen to the edge of the stage that we had with the thrust stage in Buffalo. We also didn’t have as many fixtures for the cyc there due to some electrical issues. When the show first ran, the electrics were hung as high as they could, at the ceiling of the stage, which left the majority of overhead fixtures visible. When the show moved, we agreed that we liked the look of the exposed lighting and decided to keep it for the Broadway run.” Although much of the show remained similar between the two runs, there are always small tweaks necessary to fine-tune the show, including right through previews.

The Digital Scenic Shop
The collaboration process was key to both Billington and Clark. Clark sat in on staging rehearsals and made suggestions about incorporating imagery or staging action to better connect the projection with the flow of the scene. Billington worked with Clark to create a unified look, allowing the blend of scenic and staging elements. “It really was like working with a traditional set designer,” says Billington. “It was a true collaboration.”

Clark points out, “Instead of having carpenters and scenic painters on hand to make changes during the tech process, we used digital Photoshop painters who can digitally alter the images on the spot. My assistants in the process were Jennifer Kievit and Chris Kateff.” One point of collaboration between the lighting and projection departments came in the form of the cyc. The cyc and the projection are intentionally linked, but do not necessarily match, meaning that they complement each other. At one point in the show, they blend perfectly, creating an image where the projection seems to flow onto the cyc behind it. “This was all intentional. We didn’t want them to always match, which was hard to do in its own right, but we also wanted the video and lighting to create some of the contrast in the scenes,” says Clark.

Using their restraint, the design team was able to highlight the work in a way that could have easily been lost on a Broadway stage. “We only wanted to use each trick once,” explains Clark. Making sure that they did not repeat any of their transitions or effects helped to give variety to the piece. Since the screens allowed the show to move at a very rapid pace through multiple locations, it was important not to feel as though the transitions were always the same and that the images were not similar. “A lot of the scenic imagery was a collaboration between us and scenic designer Neil Patel and his assistant, Tim Mackabee. They would help us ‘prop shop,’ finding images for us to incorporate into the digital paintings,” Clark says. Unlike some other shows that use digital scenery, this show’s images are designed to be very realistic, carefully configuring the proportion of the image on stage to make a realistic-looking setting. “We were trying to create Richard’s idea of a painted back drop, using a lot of stills and holding back on moving animation that might distract from the show.”

There are several advantages to using an LED video wall as opposed to a traditional projection surface. One benefit is that it is brighter, because it is emitting the light as opposed to reflecting it from a screen. Another benefit of a light-emitting surface is that spilling light onto it means that the image does not get washed out. “In Buffalo, our spot lights were at head height so that they were continuously all over the screens, but the images were still visible. On Broadway, we have a better angle so there is less noticeable spill,” says Billington. One issue with LED screens can often be the brightness factor, and specifi- cally that it can overpower the stage. With the control system they used, it was easy to adjust the brightness to allow the screen not to overpower the rest of the show.

Towards the end of the show, the screens suddenly turn into a cyc, something that had never been done before during the show. It’s not quite a solid color, but it is one unified color image that pops the characters into silhouette at a striking retrospective moment. As the characters become shadows, the audience is reminded that we started the show looking back at a man’s life and the stories that reveal his life are all in the past. One of the final images of the show is of a train and a journey towards an end, which helps to connect some of the references made throughout the show. The song “The Man Comes Around” begins to wrap up the show, correlating to an image of train tracks behind the cast members. After we’ve watched them all grow and evolve into various characters, the song connects them and their amorphous lives to images from real life, bringing individual meaning to each audience member. This lively celebration of the music and stories of Johnny Cash brings to life his memories as they are told through his own words.