FORT LAUDERDALE, FL — Once Upon A Dream, one of the shows playing in repertoire for guests on Princess Cruises’ 3,080-passenger Ruby Princess, which launched in November, requires moving walls to transform the set into a variety of different shapes and sizes — all on the high seas, of course. Brilliant Stages designed, built and installed sections of the set for the Bill Dudley-designed show, including side walls measuring 6 meters by 4.1 meters and a back wall measuring 9 meters by 4.1 meters. All sections are designed to move at speeds up to 0.5 meters per second.
The side walls are attached to the proscenium by hinges on which they can pivot, while the back wall can be tracked up and down stage to meet with the sides. Side wall angles vary throughout the show, moving from 75° to 45° to a very shallow 30°, with the back wall coming forward to meet them, effectively creating a morphing “box” set.
Since the walls often close off the stage, Brilliant Stages built several doors into each wall to allow performers and scenery to make entrances and exits. Each side wall has two double doors and a single door, and the back wall carries three single doors, all of which required double-acting hinges to allow them to open in both directions.
Each wall is formed from a light-weight aluminium frame with birch ply facings. These are painted a matte light gray and, in addition to their framing function, also act as projection surfaces onto which the scenery is projected using a Hippotizer media server from Green Hippo.
An extra challenge presented by Bill Dudley’s design was to find a way to protect the pale-colored surface of the projection screens during changeovers. Brilliant Stages’ John Gittins and Princess Cruises’ Stephen Grasset devised a way to move the walls to where they can be attached to fly bars. They are then flown out of harms way with the minimal handling.
The size and weight of the walls — up to 600kg with counter-weighting — still pose a challenge, however, particularly when they are moving within the moving ship. The ship’s Serapid track moves the back wall up and down stage and from stage left to stage right at 90°. Brilliant Stages designed a pivoting and linear tracking knife blade system so it could be rotated to meet the side walls and make the necessary movements to form the varied room shapes.
The Serapid track is controlled by an Acrobat controller from Stage Technologies, and the side walls are moved using Brilliant Stages’ own friction-drive mechanism with a control system designed specifically for them by long–term collaborators, Kinesys.
“We chose to work with Kinesys on the Ruby Princess — the first time we have collaborated on a Princess Cruises project — as we have had a lot of experience working together on larger touring sets and know we work together well on specialised projects such as this,” said John Gittins, operations manager. “We are in effect designing a touring set to fit on board the ship.”
Both the Acrobat and Kinesys control systems are linked into the Hippotizer to ensure that the video content is warped to track the changing shape of the set precisely.
To address the added responsibility of having a moving set aboard ship, Brilliant Stages equipped the back wall with a Safe Edge emergency stop system to prevent the back and side walls from colliding, which in turn links into the theatre’s overall emergency systems. The show is also run from live cues rather than timelines as a safety precaution.
For a second Ruby Princess show, Broadway Ballroom, Brilliant Stages designed two elaborate staircases. Each is manually moved on air castors by the dancers before being dropped back onto its framework once in position, thus securing it for the dancers’ use and against any movement caused by the ship’s motion.
Brilliant Stages was also responsible for creating the projection screen for the ship’s cinema, an aluminium framework covered by black velour to create a blackout perimeter, which was supplied via Stage Technologies.
For more information, please visit www.brilliantstages.com.
