The 94th Annual Effigy Burning Event Lights Up Santa Fe
The citizens of Santa Fe owe a debt of gratitude to Gustave Baumann. In 1924, more than 60 years before the first Burning Man festival took place in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, the Germany-born, New Mexico-based artist graced the American West with the original “burning man,” a giant marionette called “Zozobra.” Baumann’s grotesque-looking effigy, whose name means “anxiety” in Spanish, became the embodiment of gloom. By putting it to the torch every year during the city’s Fiestas de Santa Fe, locals are supposed to see their worries and concerns go up in smoke.
No word on whether or not this works (though Santa Fe is a pretty happy place), but one thing is certain: the burning of the 50-foot-high figure has become one of the city’s main good-time events and tourist attractions. Lighting the burning ceremonies and performances by local musicians this year was a rig supplied by Creative BackStage that included Chauvet Professional Maverick MK2 Spot and Rogue R2 Wash fixtures, as well as Opti Tri Par static LED units from Elation Professional.
Despite a torrential downpour, over 62,000 turned out on Labor Day weekend to see the Zozobra event. “The weather didn’t cooperate, but I’m happy to report that the show went well. We had most of our lights covered by plastic, and not a single light failed,” says John Garberson of Creative BackStage. “We did have to replace one fader on our Avo Quartz due to some water damage, but that was it.”
Joined by his programmer Andrew Latimer and tech assistant Wes Webb, Garberson arranged his moving fixtures on ten 4-by-2-by-2 road cases that were evenly spaced along a 150 foot wide stage. Each case had two Rogue R2 Wash units and one Maverick MK2 Spot fixture. At each end of this line, there were two Rogue R2 Washes on five-foot truss sections for side lighting.
The Chauvet Professional fixtures were used to add color and dimensionality to the 40-minute ceremony preceding Zozobra’s burning. Featuring a torch-carrying “fire spirit dancer” dressed all in red, surrounded by “small gloom characters,” the performance had an unmistakably theatrical flair. This was reflected in Garberson’s lighting design, with its intense bursts of light, bold colors and other dramatic flourishes.
“This is a fun event to light, and I’m grateful to David Buehler from DB Production Services for hiring us,” says Garberson. “One thing that I really like about Zozobra is that it’s very visual, so lighting obviously plays a key role. Getting the right colors was extremely important.”
Given that Zozobra is focused on a fire, red was one of Garberson’s dominant colors. However, he avoided using a “one-dimensional” color scheme. “Since there is an element of the supernatural to this event, we also wanted to create some eerie looks,” he says. “We did this very effectively by lighting the ghouls in shades of purple. We were able to focus our lights to create some scary shadows too.”
Leading up to the fire ceremony on Aug. 31, the Zozobra event featured live music by local bands. Creative BackStage set up a Stageline SL250 stage for these performers. The lighting of this stage was created with 20 Elation Professional Opti Tri Par fixtures. Garberson arranged 10 of the LED washes along the front of the stage and 10 across the upstage deck.
Although the bands on that stage “rocked well,” according to Garberson, everyone knew that the star of this event was a nasty-looking puppet. After more than six decades, Gustave Baumann’s creation is still making the people forget their worries for at least a night – and drawing huge crowds to Santa Fe in the process.
Crew
- Production: David Buehler/DB Production Services
- Lighting: Creative BackStage
- Programmer/Rigger: Andrew Latimer
- Tech: Wes Webb
- L1: John Garberson
- Fireworks: Santa Fe Kiwanis Club, Western Fireworks
Gear
- 1 Avolites Quartz console w/ wing
- 24 Chauvet Rogue R2 Washes
- 10 Chauvet Maverick MK2 Spots
- 20 Elation Opti Tri Pars
- 1 Stageline SL250 stage
