All twenty-something slacker Dewey Finn wants to do is bring the rebellious spirit of rock ‘n’ roll back to the masses, but his stunted ambition and lack of income may force his friend/housemate Ned and his fiancée Patty to kick him out. However, when Dewey intercepts a temporary teaching assignment at the Horace Green prep school meant for his friend, he gets the opportunity not only to rake in some green but to teach some young kids the history of the genre and how to rock out and speak out against authority. They also enter a battle of the bands so that Dewey can live out his failed rock glory with them. But when the other teachers and parents discover his plans, their collective worlds are turned askew.
Based on the Jack Black movie of the same name, the musical, School of Rock, is actually more fun than it should be, with leads Alex Brightman and Sierra Boggess and a spirited child cast emanating energy constantly throughout the show’s two-and-a-half-hour running time. (And yes, the kids really do play their instruments.) Well directed and choreographed, the Andrew Lloyd Weber show features striking sets from Anna Louizos, which are wonderfully lit by Natasha Katz. Both women have worked on a lot of shows with practical sets rather than those dominated by LEDs and projections, and Katz had quite a challenge here, given the three rows of sliding scenery that interlaced into some very detailed set pieces. The trick was to be able to light within that regularly shifting framework.
Moving Targets
“There is a lot of scenery in the air, and there wasn’t a lot of place for me to put lights,” Katz tells PLSN. “Because of those diagonal walls, it was hard to get light into the classroom. I’m always faced with problems like that [on shows]. Andrew Lloyd Webber and the director [Laurence Connor] really wanted to show that school as a kind of naturalistic place where it did remind you of whatever your version of that kind of prep school is, whether it’s in England or America, but it really is an American school. That defined one aspect of it, and then places like [Dewey’s] bedroom and the living room had to be real, and we had to transition from one to another. That’s really where the challenge was.”
School of Rock features many different locations: the classroom, teacher’s lounge, hallways, Dewey’s bedroom, the apartment living room, a local bar and the stage, where the battle of the bands takes place. The sliding backdrops expand or contract the stage depth depending on the location. The lounge and the school hallway are closer to the front, whereas the classroom takes up the entire depth of the stage at the Winter Garden Theatre. Dewey’s bedroom is a little different, with moments there taking place before major scenic shifts, his bed and décor, located in the center of a larger space that is underlit to allow transitions to happen.
“The toughest thing is we had the lift in the stage that brings up a couch and a bed,” notes Katz, “and we don’t want to see that hole all the time, and that means that a lot of the lights have to be darker than they normally would be for a transition. But we had to hide that hole.” Not to mention shifting the larger backdrop in anticipation of a bigger scene to follow. “So very often you have to take the lights out where the backdrops are so they can be switched, and then once they’re switched, you can bring the lights back up. It’s all sleight of hand.”
The toughest set piece to tackle was the classroom. Longer scenes take place there, and Dewey is onstage with all 13 kids each time. Katz said lighting the classroom was like lighting the set piece for a play (especially given all its nooks and crannies). “I didn’t have a lot of lighting positions, but we found our way,” she says.
Adding another challenge to the show was the venue itself, which originally was not designed for theatrical productions. “The Winter Garden is a strange theater especially for lighting in the sense that it used to be a horse stadium, so everything is very, very low,” explains Katz. “The ceiling is low, the lighting positions are low in the front of house, so that added yet another challenge.”
The lighting grid is made up of Source Four fixtures for conventionals and Martin MAC Viper Performances for moving lights. Katz says she likes to mix up incandescents with the arc source of moving lights. She chose the Vipers in particular because “their wash lights are fantastic. They have shutters and a lot of wash lights don’t, and they’re very quiet for moving lights. That was the number one reason why I wanted to use them, how quiet they are.” The LD is hoping for an improvement in that area in the future. “We’re all hoping that more and more technology is discovered where these lights will start to be silent the way they were before we had moving lights. LEDs are going to be a big part of that.”
Classroom vs. Rock Concert
For Katz, this rock musical made for a joyful endeavor, but she also focused her design and did not get overly carried away from the get-go. She sought to temper her flash with restraint. “Within each of these places there are songs, and normally music and lighting in my mind go hand-in-glove, and if there is a key modulation, I might change the color or the feel,” she says. “There was a fine line between that feeling and a rock ‘n’ roll concert. So I definitely pulled way back in the musical numbers until we got to the battle of the bands at the end. Normally I might have been more flamboyant, or hand-in-glove with the music, but I had to show a lot of restraint.”
The battle of the bands at the climax of Act II features Dewey and his pint-sized brothers and sisters in rock letting rip on a rotating stage that is approximately 18 by 12 by 22 feet (WxDxH). The mini-stage only featured about 20 lights, including diagonal LED bars that went all the way around the truss. “We designed those, and they’re custom-made by the crew — off the shelf, rock ‘n’ roll lighting,” says Katz. They were lit with miniature wireless dimmers made by RC4 Wireless, long considered the experts on Broadway for supplying small, compact wireless dimmers.
“I had so much fun lighting those rock numbers, I cannot tell you,” declares Katz. “First of all, there are so many musical beats that we could change the lights on. It was about these kids, it was about showing off all of their solos, it was almost its own little show built up on that stage. It was really, really fun.”
The idea was not to light the battle of the bands as if it were some big stadium spectacle, so Katz did not seek inspiration from major concert acts. “It’s hard to relate to a current famous rock band because this was a battle of the bands in Nowheresville, USA, so it’s not supposed to look like a U2 concert,” she says. “It’s supposed to be in between, [like] they just cobbled together some equipment together. But at the same time this meant a lot to a lot of people, so they got a lighting designer there. It stands in that place between a huge rock concert and ‘oh, let’s put on a show.’”
While many people have remarked to the LD that the rotating stage at the end seems like it has some high tech expensive lighting equipment attached or built in, she stresses that it is deceptively simple. “If you went to a school and they put on a show, they could get those lights,” says Katz. “It’s not expensive equipment, it’s the kind of stuff that you could call up your local lighting company and put them on stands. It’s more a question of how you use it.”
Katz really enjoyed working on School of Rock and loved its themes and political undertones wrapped inside a fun, family-friendly show. She found the cast and crew to be quite talented. “Andrew Lloyd Weber was extremely present throughout the entire thing, which, as you could imagine, was a joy to have him around with all his theater experience,” she says. “That was great. The kids worked so hard and were fantastic. That was also great to watch. There was a lot of energy from this creative team. The choreographer was so energetic, and the kids had to retain a lot. It was a very exciting process, no question.”
Gear
1 ETC EOS TI 8000 Lighting Console
33 Color Kinetics Color Blast TRX 12
20 Rosco Miro Cube 4C RGBW
52 Martin MAC Viper Performance
18 Martin MAC Viper Wash DX
12 Clay Paky Sharpys
19 Martin MAC Auras
30 ETC Source Four Double Clutch 14°
93 ETC Source Four 19°
98 ETC Source Four 26°
64 ETC Source Four 36°
10 ETC Source Four 50°
1 ETC Source Four 15°-30° Zoom
16 PAR 64 ACL (chrome finish)
16 PAR 64 ACL (black short nose)
4 PAR 56 (short nose MFL)
4 Mole-Richardson 9-Light Molefays
15 Vegas Mini Strip med flood w/ plug thru
16 Mini-10s
7 Martin Atomic strobes
40 TPR Star strobes
46 Wybron 4” Coloram IT
30 Wybron 71⁄2” Coloram IT
3 MDG Atmospheres hazers
2 Look Solutions Viper fog machine s
3 Jem AF-1 MkII DMX fans
2 96 x 2.4kW ETC Sensor AF dimmer racks
2 48 x 2.4kW ETC Sensor AF dimmer racks
1 24 x 2.4kW ETC Sensor AF dimmer racks
4 RC4 Wireless dimmers
4 72 Way PRG Series 400 power distro racks
