Colorful Character Creates Rainbows Down Under
After conquering Broadway, The Boy From Oz has returned to Australia in a new production of the original musical, especially designed for the arena stage. Hugh Jackman has recreated his Tony Award-winning role as Peter Allen in a nationwide tour for the production and its star.
This new production is directed by Kenny Ortega, director/choreographer of many largescale events. Joining the main cast are a supporting cast of 40 singer-dancers, a 25-piece orchestra, elaborate sets, spectacular lighting and more than 400 dazzling costumes.
The Boy From Oz premiered in Sydney in March, 1998. This Australian musical, exploring the life story and music of Peter Allen, toured Australia for two years, winning numerous awards and grossing in excess of $60 million.
In October, 2003, Hugh Jackman starring in the title role launched the production on Broadway. The show played to capacity houses for a year, and it was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Musical, winning a Tony Award for Hugh Jackman. An Australian-conceived production about an Australian, starring an Australian, had conquered Broadway.
So what began life eight years ago as a musical has now become an arena spectacular. And with a minimal set, the lighting plays a major part in setting the right atmosphere for each of the scenes. Hence, the producers decided to bring in lighting designer Patrick Woodroffe, who was closely assisted by Richard Pacholski, an Australian lighting guru.
The Design Process
Having read the script and familiarized himself with this version of The Boy From Oz, Woodroffe flew to Barcelona to meet Kenny Ortega.
“We discussed generally what this show was about, and then we went through it number by number,” said Woodroffe. “You want the director to be knowledgeable about lighting, but not too knowledgeable! A lot of the show actually takes place in live situations, what we call our ‘show look,’ so Peter Allen is here entertaining people in the present day, but he’s also thinking back to other places. We had to find a way to make those two elements different; the live show and the intimate dream moments.”
Having gotten a sense of the shape of the show from Ortega, Woodroffe tackled the technical and budgeting tasks, and once a lighting production company had been appointed, Chameleon Touring Systems, Pacholski was able to start specifying the gear required.
“Richard took care of a lot of the details, many of them of his own bat, and was able to take on a lot of the responsibility,” Woodroffe said. “He was able to attend the production meetings and did many of the things that I was unable to do, as I was not in the country. As they were putting the rig up in Australia, I was still in Europe, so Richard would e-mail me photographs and take important decisions on my behalf. I can’t emphasize enough what a key part of our team he was and how he very much set the style and the pace of the way that the whole Australian crew worked together.”
Woodroffe arrived in Sydney 12 days before opening night, going straight to an offsite rehearsal of the show, where he made cue notes. Later that day he sat down with Jason Fripp (the console programmer who Woodroffe describes as one of the best that he has ever worked alongside), and in four hours they had roughed in the first act.
“By that, I mean that we set something for every one of those cue points, however sketchy it might be, to give us a basis for the cast rehearsals, which were to follow,” he said. “It was just enough to show how that song might look. The next day we did the same with Act 2, and so we then had about 100 cues in the console. Jason had, of course, done a lot of preparation before we started, including palettes, focuses, chases and color combinations from a brief that I had given him, but also a lot of things that I hadn’t thought about.”
This all meant that when rehearsals began the next day, the performers could rehearse their numbers under a lighting state that had the atmosphere of that scene without the fine detail. Over the following days the lighting was finessed; one cue that was originally just blue would become 10 cues because it was dim to start with and some floor lights were added — like an artist painting with large brushstrokes and adding the detail later.
“We were always working from the idea of the big picture — creating a strong base atmosphere and then finessing it once we had the arc of the show,” revealed Woodroffe. “If I have any distinct style in lighting, it’s that I’m monochromatic; I don’t like to mix up too many colors. I come from a background of rock concerts, where things tend to be a little chaotic, and I’ve always tried to make sense of the lighting by organizing the songs into strong, simple color pictures.
“Because of the discipline of the director in the way he has run the rehearsal process, and because the lighting team was well prepared, we’ve managed to finish work each night before midnight and still be ready for the company the next day. A lot of this is due to Jason’s programming, which was not only fast and efficient, but also imaginative and to the point.”
The Rig
The control console for the show is an MA Lighting grandMA console, which Fripp is extremely adept at using.
“I’d have a scene in my head, relay it to Jason, and almost instantly he would make the stage look like that,” Woodroffe said. “This is not always the case with programmers, particularly if it’s the first time that you are working together. The speed between thinking about something and having it actually happen is hugely important, however it works. I’ve always thought that, one day, a voice-activated console may happen; can you imagine sitting with a microphone and saying ‘orchestra lights 50%’ and it happens? However, it probably still wouldn’t be as fast as working with Jason, because I can’t say ‘the orchestra lights are the wrong color.’ Jason would know, because we’ve altered the color on the stage, that the orchestra light now does not match because he has a certain amount of sensitivity as a designer.”
Remarkably for a vast arena, the mood slips easily from flamboyant razzmatazz to moments of intimacy. This is achieved primarily though Woodroffe’s intuitive lighting design.
“There are some very poignant moments in the show, and you have to combine these successfully with the glitzy numbers,” he said. “For example, you have to be able to focus on a small child onstage who has just been told his father is dead, so what do you do? You can’t just turn everything off because it all becomes very dead. It’s not like a blackbox theatre, where you can have a single Leko isolating the child. In the lower-key scenes, I tend to leave light painted around the main focus, just to keep the composition full.”
When Woodroffe first saw a model of the stage set, he knew that large masses of light would be required overhead from three or four trusses. Nestled within the main trusses is a separate central grid that flies in for the Studio 54 disco scene.
“To pick out a single person on a stage in an arena, you need a fixture that can deliver great intensity, and so we have some Martin MAC 2000 Washes,” he said. “They’re a wonderful, bright, powerful wash light, but they also have precise and useful beam characteristics.”
According to Pacholski, Woodroffe was not initially too fussy about which brand of equipment was used, but it soon became obvious that the MAC 2000 Profiles and Washes were the best choice, as they are the real work-horses on the show. All of the 71 MAC 2000 Washes are overhead in the rig, while the 32 MAC 2000 Profiles are on both the overhead rig and the arch. The Profiles favored the downstage trusses, from where they could do more specific lighting and get a bit tighter into areas. The Washes were mainly used on the audience trusses and the backlight trusses.
Vari*Lite VL500s were used for side lighting from the upper and lower decks, as well as a low back light along the front edge of the elevated platform. Side-mounted on custom mounts, the VL500s took a lot of work to integrate in this way, with both Pacholski and ES Staging struggling to make the positioning successful.
“They were very exposed in this position, delivering the typical VL500 look that we really love,” said Pacholski. “They were close range lighting, so the incandescent level of the VL500s still matched the MAC 2000s, as they were further away.”
Followspots are only used in the show scenes, not in any fantasy or flashback scene, which helps to make it clearer to the audience where they are.
Set designer Brian Thomson was adamant that a color-changing dance floor, similar to the one in Saturday Night Fever, be used during the Studio 54 and Hong Kong numbers, so one was created on staging that is lifted via hydraulic lifts. Rather than go to the expense of something custom-made, Pacholski chanced upon Pro Shop LED tiles, which are cost effective. While only visible from the cheap seats, maybe about 30% of the audience, the 78 LED tiles still reflect quite a bit of light onto scenery and performers.
“It was great to be able to pick something off the shelf, and these tiles are very bright and directional,” said Pacholski. “They fitted the job perfectly.”
The designer desired a rainbow arch as the main set element framing the LED screen, and initially, colored globes in rows seemed a good idea, but Pacholski questioned the wisdom of building something that could only be a rainbow.
“I started looking for a product that could be a rainbow, but also many other things as well,” he explained. “Eventually, I came across the Element Labs VersaTubes, and my first idea was to have the tubes running lengthways so there were six long rows of tubes forming an arch. But we discovered that they looked much better in a vertical array fanning out, and then by running media through them, we could create our rainbow. The consistency of color and the brightness of the VersaTubes was the main reason we chose them. The fact that they use video LEDs, not just colored LEDs, also impressed us.”
By choosing the 285 VersaTubes, the design team was able to create a myriad of effects through the arch, courtesy of a Martin Maxedia, programmed by Fripp.
“My preference was by far for the Maxedia because of the support from Show Technology, Martin’s Australian distributor, and we were starting the show in Sydney, where they are based,” explained Pacholski. “It was an easy choice and, of course, it all married in with the Martin MACs and MA boards, also distributed by Show Technology. The rainbow and the Chinese characters that scroll around the arch were made as custom media by Interactive Originals, while every other piece of media was sourced from the standard Maxedia library, which is vast.”
The VersaTubes are 16 pixels in length, and because there were 285 tubes, the team had a screen that was 285 pixels wide but only 16 pixels high, a strange format to work with, and some media files just didn’t suit this sizing.
Another problem to be solved was how to light up the treads of the stairs. Again, Pacholski didn’t see the point of just using colored globes, so he opted for Pulsar ChromaBanks instead. Unfortunately, the ChromaBanks were available in only one length, and the treads were one and a half times that length. Fortunately, Pulsar was more than happy to make a special batch of half-length ChromaBanks to solve the dilemma.
“We could then do whatever we wanted color-wise, including yet another rainbow effect, as each tread had individual control,” stated Pacholski.
Another colorful rainbow effect for a colorful character; this production is the ultimate Boy From Oz experience. It’s a flashy, tinselly and excessive celebration of one man’s flashy, tinselly and excessive life.
