Designing projections for a Broadway musical is no easy task. First you develop a concept for the show, next create the content, and then build a visual space that works with the show. Then you must acquire the actual physical means by which to display the media and be prepared for the complications that arise from that. You must be flexible enough with your work to make changes on site or come up with new ideas to work while the show is in rehearsals. Once it’s open and successful, then it’s time to take it on tour! This is exactly what happened to projection designer Elaine McCarthy. As the projection designer for both Wicked and Spamalot, Elaine has spent a good part of the last two years putting both of these shows out on the road, and is currently putting both in sit-down productions in London’s West End. I recently spoke with Elaine on one of her few breaks from the back-to-back load ins and she told me a bit about what it’s like taking a Broadway show on the road…and back again.
When Wicked opened on Broadway, it had two High End Systems Catalyst media servers feeding two 6000ANSI lumen projectors which were mounted on the balcony rail with Catalyst Orbital Heads on them. “Wicked coincided with the arrival of an early Catalyst, and I do mean early. Those were the days where it didn’t have the ability to dissolve between clips and had substantial problems with slowing down or speeding up movies. It was clear that it was developed for moving light people and not video people,” says McCarthy. “The challenge I had was to be able to cover the stage with a video image, but then also put a smaller image here, there and anywhere that may be required. I needed to create part of the magic of Elphaba’s (the wicked witch of the west) character.”
Based on the novel, Wicked is the story of the Glenda, the good witch, and Elphaba, the wicked witch, before they became enemies. It begins when they met at school, and tells the tale of how they came to be at odds with each other in the world of The Wizard of Oz. After winning eight Tony Awards, including scenic, costume and lighting design awards as well as Best Musical, the show was destined to be a touring monster. Spamalot, which similarly won a total of 12 Tonys, was also one of the biggest shows on Broadway in the past few years. With a plot derived from the film classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail, this mock-umusical was one of the biggest hits of 2005 and, along with Wicked, will be opening in London’s West End this fall.
Taking shows of this scale on the road requires redevelopment in all areas of stagecraft, including projection. As all the content was created specifically for the show, it had to be recreated within the same system so that it was robust and able to stand up to the rugged pace of the road. “Using the mirror heads meant that there were a couple of times that the movement of the content is created exclusively with the moving mirror heads. The best example are the flying monkeys that emerge from upstage center, fly about on stage, then break the proscenium and fly into the house and over the stage to disappear in the distance. Otherwise the moving mirror heads best served the design by allowing me to cover specific locations,” says McCarthy. Taking this type of show on the road meant making some substantial changes to the way it was originally created. The team still used the Catalyst media server, which had been updated significantly since the original production, and the projectors with mirror heads. “The moving mirror heads actually allowed me to create a show that could be maintained by electricians. Brendan Quigley has been the electrician responsible for the projections on Wicked from the very beginning and in all iterations except London. When it came time to tour the show, there was a discussion of making it one big projector covering the entire stage, the thought being that it would be easier to move from city to city. In fact, what we had with two projectors was just as straight forward due to one simple rule that Brendan established for me, and that I was happy to accommodate: I was allowed to create no more than 10 focus points for all of my moving projection cues.
“That being the case,” continues McCarthy, “as we created the tour based on Broadway, my programmer Hillary Knox and assistant Jake Pinholster and I worked very hard to step through the show seeing what focus we could apply to each and every cue, so that we could make it all fit. In the end, we wound up with 12 focus points—give me an inch, and I’ll take a foot!” Given the complexity of the video projection in the show, this was quite a feat. “A favorite moment of my career was when I got a call from Brendan about six months into the tour saying that the focus charts we had prepared, along with his dozen focus points, were making it very easy for him to travel with the projections. We used the same focus charts for our starting point here in London, as well as in Chicago, which was essentially the tour that morphed into a sit-down version of the show.”
A lot of times, tour versions of shows get to upgrade or make substitutions for certain gear, as it has either been out dated, or something better has come along to replace the original. “As far as the Catalyst, ever since we started the Wicked tour, it has given me everything I need. Now that we have eight layers, we use all of them. In one new cue for the London show, we use one layer for the witch, a second that is a star field surrounding the witch, and a third that is an alpha-channel wipe of the stage that allows me to wipe up on the stage with the drop that is flying out to reveal the effect. All this time the other layers are marking for the next cue or were being used in the previous scene.”
This is one obvious benefit derived from using a DMX-controlled media server, especially the ease in editing these types of compiled cues. “Having the wipe happen on its own layer allowed me to not have to rerender the content movie to get to the beginning in a seamless loop,” says McCarthy. This is also a good example of how tours often build off of the original Broadway structure of a show, as they have additional tech time and can add small changes to the show as it already exists.
One other specific modification they made for the tour of Wicked was the creation of platforms on which the projectors sit, allowing the load-in to go faster and keeping the shows looking similar. “The technical team, Jake Bell, technical director, and Bobby Fehrbach, production electrician, built platforms which held the mirror heads directly to the platforms and are simply works of art. They are extremely adaptable to a variety of venues. But the simple thought of making a second set of platform/mirror head combinations that could leap-frog ahead to the next venue for an advance load-in made an enormous difference. The load-in now consists of dropping two projectors onto the platforms, mirror heads already in place. I love simple solutions,” explains McCarthy.
For Spamalot, McCarthy took a different approach altogether regarding her media playback and control. “What we needed for Spamalot was a big bright projector, but all we could afford were two smaller projectors that would provide converge. We also needed to project on no less than five different focal planes, which made the case for converged projectors even harder. The solution we came up with was to use a Dataton Watchout system to adjust the content pixel by pixel for each of the projectors. By the end of tech, we had cues that were made up of about fi fty layers of content, which leads the whole system to being a bit hard to maintain. The crew at the Shubert did a great job, but whenever the audience had too much fun, the projectors would slowly stop converging and the image would appear less clear.” As this type of problem would only grow exponentially in a tour environment, McCarthy had an unusual experience when starting work on the tour. McCarthy explains, “For the tour, the management said to me, ‘Don’t think about logistics or budget; tell us what you need.’ After getting off the fl oor, we started researching a single brighter projector and found one that was a responsible size for touring, with low fan noise, and found a DLP projector that was approximately 16,000 ANSI lumens. The show really benefi ts from the quality of the DLP projector as well as the reality that they can be refurbished. With an LCD projector, you need to replace them every two to three years.” McCarthy goes on to say, “The only issue I have with the 16K DLP is that it’s hard for me to go back to anything else. After doing the tour, we went back and upgraded the Broadway show with the same projector we use on tour. And now the question on everyone’s lips is ‘We’re going to get the same projector as the tour right?’ As far as the upgrade, it only took two days, one to re-rig the new system, and one day to confi rm all the cues were correct.”
McCarthy goes on to illustrate a point about multiple incarnations of the same show. “They are never ‘cookie-cutter.’ Get a group of creative people in a room, or back in the room as it might be, and, by golly, new ideas pop up! For example, when I was designing both tours, I was asked by lighting and scenery to provide help with illuminating drops that I had not provided on the Broadway productions. I had a big bright source of light hanging from the balcony rail. Why not use it not only to project video content, but also to work as a lighting instrument? In both instances, I believe I was able to make the balcony rail a little lighter hang for the LX team, which also helped the touring aspect of it.” McCarthy imparts some tried and true touring knowledge. “An important thing I’ve learned about touring is that both scenery and lighting can design their systems, for the most part, to fi t into a stage ‘box.’ That ‘box’ can travel from venue to venue, as long as you design it for the best and worst case scenarios. Projections are always at the mercy of that big variable, the distance from front of house to the projection surface. The biggest challenge any of my assistants have had has been getting enough information about front of house positions so that we can feel confi dent the touring crew can be prepared for each venue. We have never not been able to make it work thus far, although I imagine some have looked better than others.”
Working at this scale always means there will be challenges when putting shows like these into theatres for which they were not originally designed. The key to touring, as McCarthy astutely pointed out, is making it work the best it can and being able to adapt to maintain the original show for the audience. With all of her touring work in the past year, she’s gotten a firm handle on it. It will be exciting to see how the West End productions of her shows work out in the coming year.
