Event Producers Sets the Stage
The schedule looks something like this: Get in to town on Sunday, maybe Friday or Saturday if you are lucky. Walk through Hall D of the Anaheim Convention Center late Sunday night, go over some points, make sure that you have all of the gear and prep yourself for a long week. This 221,284 square foot convention hall needs to be turned into an 11,000 seat theatre by 8:30 a.m. Thursday for the opening ceremonies for AARP’s National Event, “Life at 50+: Lights, Camera, Anaheim,” a gala-event with performances by Bill Cosby, Jose Feliciano and Elton John; along with appearances by Maya Angelou, Geena Davis and Dan Rather, among others.
The planning for the event begins about a year out, with trips to the site by Max Sasseen, owner of Event Producers, the producer responsible for the AARP Theatre. Every year he tailors all the stage and scenic elements for the event to fit in each specific venue, which is just one reason why Hurricane Katrina forced the cancellation of the conference last year in New Orleans — the theatre environment couldn’t simply be transposed to just any other space.
The AARP Theatre has been put together for the past five years without the benefit of a scenic designer, but Bruce Sanders, AARP’s director of national events, has a strong theatrical vision; he and Sasseen are the driving force behind the show. Bruce Sanders wrote the skit for the opening ceremonies and is the person who brought the show together. Sasseen comes up with the concepts for the scenic design and works with Scott Hoffman and Michael Schwandt, both members of the Event Producers staff, to turn those ideas into a functional and structural design. Sasseen and Hoffman work together to create sketches of the intended layout and scenic elements. These then go to Schwandt, who uses Auto- CAD to merge the design and venue information into the working and technical drawings. This information is then passed on to Kustom Kraftsmen who are responsible for the build. As the year progresses both Sasseen and Schwandt travel to Las Vegas to meet with Ben and Tim Karlsen of Kustom Kraftsmen to check on the progress of the build, as well as to discuss any new information and to head off any problems that may have developed.
The AARP Theatre in Anaheim was arranged to provide the most scenic footage possible. By increasing the amount of scenic footage, Sasseen was able to reduce the distance between the back rows of seating and the stage. Set up along a 530-foot-long wall, the stage was flanked by six projection screens fed by High End Systems Catalyst media servers, three on each side, to give the audience plenty to look at. The four 20-foot tall by 60-foot wide screens and two 20-foot tall by 21-foot wide screens not only allowed for video clips and live camera work during the performances, but also provided closed captioning during the presentations. The extra- wide orientation was chosen to decrease the audience depth. Had the orientation of the hall been rotated 90 degrees, with less scenic footage and fewer screens, the closed captioning would have been illegible to the back half of the audience.
Even with all this taken into consideration, using the longer wall to give the audience as much to see as possible, and making it as clear as possible, some people still managed to walk in and ask “Where’s the stage?” When the stage was not lit, it was easily overpowered by the bright logos on the projection screens. As the acts began, the stage became clearly visible and the multiple screens enhanced the overall performance by providing extra clarity and information. The scenic columns and fans framing the screens helped to unify the various surfaces as well as to mask the stark distinction between screen and curtain, giving the scenic footage a cohesive appearance.
The low ceilings of the convention hall, combined with the amount of scenic footage, increased the sense of intimacy for the audience once the show got going, but they also provided their own set of problems for the lighting designer, Peter H. Smith.
“It’s hard to make the space look big,” he said. The almost 300 feet of dark blue curtains that showed between and around the stage and screens were almost overwhelming, causing the stage and screens to look smaller than they were. He used Vari*Lite VL3500s to help enlarge the space. “They’re putting out great textures and livening it up, even though we’re only using 10 of them. They’re lighting the drapes and lighting it well.” By adding color and texture to the background the scenic footage became more unified and less disjointed.
He also liked the effect the Martin MAC 700s had: “They’re great and punchy and beamy.” All this combined to increase the visual picture but at the same time not take focus away from the performers and presenters. Smith used the texture on the curtains to balance the focus between the screens and the stage when the shows were being performed, so nothing was being projected into a void.
Smith started work on the show in April, drafting and revising according to comments from the producers. He was able to come into the space with most of the show pre-programmed thanks to the MA Lighting grand- Ma console. “I had the positions and color punched in, but I didn’t use the 3-D modeling. I was able to get a lot built before coming in, like buttons and colors and washes.”
He only got about four hours to clean things up on Tuesday in the space, but because he has been working on the conference since the 2002 show in San Diego, he has been able to make some changes to help things run a bit smoother. “Originally we made it a lot harder on ourselves,” he says, by trying to get plots from the designers of the various shows.
“Now it’s set up more as a festival stage. We’re not trying to put in side booms for the dancers, for example.” That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have to take all the different performance riders into account, but it does mean that at the end of the day, there’s only one lighting designer in charge of making Elton John look good, as well as keeping the audience happy, and figuring out ways to give the dancers texture as well. It’s a lot to take into consideration, but Smith, as well as the rest of people responsible for the AARP theatre, pride themselves on putting together a cohesive show.
What it all comes down to is that this is a group of people who enjoy working together and it shows. They are able to come together from across the country and turn a convention hall into a theatre in three days, never an easy task, and the focus is on creating a theatre, not just rows of chairs in a warehouse. They create an environment where, after a color guard unfurls American flags to a flash of pyro, a dance troop will lead into an interview with Dan Rather; give them a couple more hours and it can play host to an Elton John concert as well. That they are even willing to do it again next year, at the 2007 National Event in Boston, speaks to the teamwork they’ve developed.
