Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch Who Stole Christmas is a classic children’s book that was adapted into an animated television program, and in recent years has also become a hit movie with Jim Carrey and a popular musical theatre production in San Diego for eight years running. Now Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical is tantalizing Broadway in its first limited holiday run. Grinch head electrician/light board operator Cletus Karamon certainly has his hands full with this special engagement, 70- minute production, which runs 12 times a week, including four shows on Saturdays and three on Sundays. But Karamon — a 12-year veteran of touring Broadway shows who subs over at The Producers — also did A Christmas Carol the previous two years at Madison Square Garden, and that show ran 15 times a week. So he’s used to intensity.
What is immediately striking about The Grinch is how it works as a whole rather than merely as another Broadway spectacle. “I think lighting designer Pat Collins has done a wonderful job of enhancing the show and not making it a light show,” remarks Karamon. “Pat’s a seasoned veteran. She knows shows, and that it’s about the show.” It also helps that there’s a strong ensemble cast and that Patrick Page hams it up and commands the stage as that lovable curmudgeon the Grinch.
“Patrick is definitely great,” concurs Karamon. “He’s wonderful to watch night after night. John Lee Beatty’s set design is wonderful. They stay real true to the book. It’s based on The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, but it’s not word for word. It wasn’t a musical, so now they’ve got these wonderful songs to play with. It’s not over the top tech-wise.”
That being said, there is plenty of technology at work to make The Grinch the grand show that it is. Prep commenced on September 15, and load-in began September 28. Karamon and Collins worked together during the tech period in the Hilton Theatre, which began with three days of dry tech and a whole week of tech rehearsals prior to the first preview on October 25. Since they were dealing with a show that had a history, the creative staff knew what they wanted, but there were still some nips and tucks done up to opening night. While Karamon runs everything — lights, moving lights, effects and projections — from his position at the back of the orchestra section, there were separate programmers present for each during tech.
Karamon runs four boards for The Grinch. “I am triggering all cues off of the Obsession 2, sending MIDI to the moving light board, FX board and triggering the projections off of DMX,” he explains. “I have a backup Hog iPC that’s MIDI-ed through, so they’re constantly in sync with each other. So if I have a problem, I just have to switch the A/B DMX back up and be right on line still with the backup Hog iPC. The Obsession is the main conventional board, and I’m firing the projectors off of that also. Scharff Weisberg put in a DMX converter control into their towers so I could fire their projectors from the Obsession, plus I MIDI out to the iPC board, which is running Hog 2 software. The Obsession is also MIDIing out to an Expression 2X for the effects, but that’s running Expression 3 software.”
The stage for The Grinch features a high arch framing the center of the action, flanked on either side by smaller, rotating set pieces, which allows for a lot of action to take place in a short period of time. The arch includes dozens of light bulbs that come on at various times. The foot lights in the front of the stage are small PAR 38 cans with red lamps. Little Who eyes light up in the show curtain in the beginning, and there are also Diversitronics Finger Strobes in the black backdrop and in the Christmas tree. A small set piece that represents a faraway view of the Who village, with little Who puppets that come out and sing during the first and second halves of the show, features LED light rope, of which Karamon is not a fan. “I had some issues with trying to fade it up at low levels,” he admits. “I had issues with it flickering compared with something smooth like an incandescent rope light.” So he spent some time trying to solve that problem.
In total, The Grinch has over 450 running lights. “A lot of the front of house stuff is 19° (ETC) Source Fours 750 watt,” reveals Karamon. “The over stage stuff is PAR 64 PAR cans, basically narrows and some mediums on the ladders. Pat’s also using a bunch of mini-strips over stage.”
Projection on The Grinch is solely used to generate a snow effect on a mesh screen inside the arch. Mark Mongold did the projection design, and Scharff Weisberg supplied it. The two projectors are Barco RLM R6+ Performers, they run throughout most of the show. “It’s so subtle that people don’t realize that snow is falling a lot during the show,” notes Karamon. “There’s gently falling snow, faster moving snow and a still snow that is used. There’s a little cloud effect with the fast moving snow that’s also used.” These projections add to the atmosphere of the production.
The main Who house presented a challenge for the production team, as it integrated all the different technological aspects of the show. It is built on an automated turtle and spins, and it has Color Kinetics LEDs and some Arris. There is smoke for the chimney, a Christmas tree that lights up, and hanging balls. “It required a lot of aspects from different departments — effects, moving lights — even though there are no moving lights in the unit,” explains Karamon. “The Color Kinetics were programmed using the Hog console. It all wound up running through the Hog because we could just put the hot power feeds in the Who house, and we took the WDS system from City Theatrical to supply the DMX for a Leprecon six-pack dimmer that runs the LED window boxes, the tree, the hanging garland and the Arris plus the Color Kinetics. We also interconnected it so that the smoke for the chimney would program through the Hog. Usually the effects board, the moving lights and the conventional units would all be separate, but the Color Kinetics were already being done by the Wholehog. For that situation it was best for the Hog to take it all.”
Even though there is plenty of modern technology used for The Grinch, “we still do a little old school,” says Karamon. There are seven dimmer racks because they are using 1K PAR cans, so they could not do any multiplexing. “There’s a little more technology there with the Color Kinetics, the WDS system, LSG machines, finger strobes, tiny foggers and a few other tricks. On the sleigh we have wireless dimmers. The WDS system has some Color Kinetics on there besides cute little hanging hurricane lanterns on either side of the sleigh. That’s all wireless, too.”
Effects-wise, the show has confetti (for the climax) and fog, for which Look Solutions Tiny Foggers and Le Maitre Power Foggers are used. Karamon says that each chimney has its own little Tiny Fogger in it, and they have a Power Fogger for the snow puffs behind the Mount Crumpet set. One stagehand randomly puts little puffs of smoke out with a hand held, battery operated fogger.
“We’re also using the MDG Atmosphere Haze Generator a little bit in the show, and we’re also using four LSGs, low smoke generators,” continues Karamon. The LSGs operate off of 350-pound CO2 tanks, and the show goes through about 12 to 15 a week. He estimates that they go through a quarter tank per show, per machine. “There are two LSGs upstage and two downstage. The upstage ones are just hoses laid on the deck, and the other ones are ducked into the floor, into the show deck, with PVC and a grating so it gets it right out towards the center of the stage. The LSGs have a Power Fog Industrial 9D Fog Machine by Le Maitre that supplies the smoke. The LSG is just about the CO2.”
For those who don’t know how an LSG machine works, Karamon offers a quick primer. “Basically instead of dry ice, a regular smoke machine, in this case the 9D, shoots into the LSG. The LSG has a chamber that is receiving the CO2 to cool down the smoke so that it lays flat to the stage like fog, and you don’t have that dry ice issue of the stage getting wet and dancers slipping. We are using a little bit of dry ice with a Tiny Fogger. When the Grinch comes in from his cave, we shoot a Tiny Fogger into a dry ice bin that has a fan that pushes it out. Its stays a little low to the ground, it’s kind of like a rolling fog. Nowadays people are mainly using the LSG for a full stage effect, for low fog effects.”
The production team behind The Grinch did not want the smoke to overwhelm the stage, but humidity can throw a monkey wrench into that plan, as evidenced two days into the show’s official run when the November weather was unseasonably warm. “Believe it or not, the weather will have an effect on the fog day by day,” remarks Karamon. “I’ve had the LSG machine on an inhibitive submaster. Yesterday I was pulling it down, all the way out at times, because it was too overpowering and wasn’t going anywhere. It would come out to the sixth, seventh or eighth row in the audience, so I would pull it back and start riding it manually in the cues. The past two days have been real tough. From opening night on it was just humid, and the fog would just hang there and not dissipate.”
With everything going on, The Grinch’s light board op has his hands full. It’s a challenge he relishes. “This show is pretty cue intensive,” confirms Karamon. “A lot happens in a 70-minute show with 22 scenes, I have roughly 250 light cues and 220 call cues. There are 40 light cues in the Whatchama Who song alone. There are so many different beats to hit with all of the flashing and craziness going on, you really need to be with the orchestra on that. Who has time to get bored?”
