Lighting Co
Christie Lites
Venue
Various (Tour)
Crew
Lighting Designer/Director: Susanne Sasic
Tour Manager: Tom Carlson
Christie Lites Account Rep: Ian Gordon
Trucking Co: Upstaging
Set Elements: Upstaging (pink steps)
Painted Backdrop: Grosh Scenic
Gear
1 grandMA 2 console
13 Martin MAC Auras
8 Martin MAC 101s
18 Philips Showline SL Nitro 510 LED strobes
1 DF-50 hazers
Tour Notes: This is the second time lighting designer/director Susanne Sasic has worked with artist St. Vincent (Annie Clark); the first was the David Byrne & St. Vincent Love This Giant tour in 2012-2013. Sasic has also lit Arcade Fire, The White Stripes, R.E.M., Beck, Nirvana, Sonic Youth, among others.
For more tour photos by Steve Jennings, go to plsn.me/StVincentExtras
Designer Insights:
Susanne Sasic
LD/Lighting Director
“The 2012-2013 Love This Giant tour with David Byrne & St. Vincent was my first time working with Annie (I had previously worked with David Byrne on his 2004 Grown Backwards tour). David has a preference for very simple lighting and staging, while Annie wanted something more dynamic and colorful. It was interesting to see how how much David was willing to truly collaborate, he fully embraced strobing lights and crazy colors for Annie’s songs at her request. When she started talking about her own tour she mentioned that she liked strobes and wanted a more extreme version of what I had been doing for her songs on the Love This Giant tour.
“We started off talking about having some kind of simple structure at the center of the stage, and she sent me film stills, fine art imagery, fashion photos, photos of buildings and structures, etc., to illustrate what was going thru her head. Initially we were going to build a simple round riser lit from below with a Lexan deck on top as a stage centerpiece but then Annie decided she wanted to use the pink throne from the cover of her record as a stage set piece instead. We then quickly scrapped that idea due to problems with scale and the usability of that actual piece, and I came up with the idea of an oversized set of 3 tiered pink steps that she could climb up, stand on, sit on, etc. Since the show is choreographed by New York choreographer Annie B Parsons, who had also done the Love This Giant tour, it was important to have a structural element that could be used for some kind of movement. To accent the stepped shape of the riser I designed a backdrop that shows a similar blocky pink shape but scaled larger. For budget considerations we knew we would be taking out a floor package only, at least the first half of the year. I wanted all the low angles, uplighting and shadows that floor lighting allows, most of my designs start from the ground up anyway.
“I have been waiting for a long time for a newer more updated strobe fixture to show up on the market, and at last, LED strobes are coming into their own. I went to a demo of the Philips Showline Nitro LED strobe last fall (around the time Annie and I were starting to seriously make plans for 2014), and was immediately excited by the possibilities of the fixture. Strobes have always been a favorite of mine, and here was a version that was bright, with a great high color temperature, that gave off a beautifully flat, even field of white light. Without the shutdown problem of thermal protection. The strobe can also be used as a plain simple source of white light, left on at full power for extended periods. And of course they have the low power consumption of an LED fixture. They have pixel mapping ability, and a basic mode setup of six separate “zones” that can be controlled with simple built-in effects and patterns. They were perfect for a tour with a bit of a space alien/Man Who Fell to Earth theme named ‘Digital Witness,’ with a lot of robotic choreography. The color white that comes out of them is pure and otherworldly, and the effects are endlessly useful for creating tricky strobe moments where you’re not sure what you are really seeing on the stage. I also wanted “big blast” moments where the strobes are used as super bright white hot audience blinders. That was an important design consideration as well.
“For this initial leg, I am the all-purpose lighting person on the tour (set designer, lighting designer, programmer, director, tech). We will be adding crew as the year progresses. I did have Teresa Hull of Christie Lites NY tech for me in New York at production rehearsals, prep days in the shop and at the first show; she was a tremendous help.
“Annie and I have a pretty good rapport and understanding, so I felt comfortable just coming up with a lot of ideas and programming away at production rehearsals. The show is completely choreographed and that guided me a lot of the way. There is a great deal of specific movement that needed to be highlighted or featured in some way. Then there are a lot of extended guitar noise parts that lend themselves to a variety of strobe effects, always my favorite. Programming and shaping the show has been an ongoing process that has continued as the tour has gone on.
“Grosh Scenic did a beautiful job creating a painted backdrop for us. Upstaging built us two giant pink steps set pieces (one for the U.S. and one for our European shows). HSL in Blackburn, U.K. supplied the floor package for our initial short European run with Rob Starksfield building it and Mike Oates as our account rep. Andy Hayward at Lever and Beam management was a great help with all the pre-production before the tour began.”
