Every now and then a live show gets interrupted. Sometimes it’s due to some audio difficulty such as a mic or musical instrument has a failure. Often it’s due to power outages. But last week I found a new way to disrupt a show. Flying turf.
He’s worked with such theatre legends as Stephen Sondheim (writer, Sweeney Todd), Hal Prince (director, Guys ‘n Dolls) and Arthur Laurent (writer/director, Gypsy). His resume reads like the Who’s Who of Broadway productions. His gallery of Broadway show posters, many of them signed, spans three rows on three walls. His three-story New York City brownstone is filled with Broadway me-mentos and pictures from show openings. Displayed on top his bookshelf is an array of honors: an Olivier Award (Kiss of the Spiderwoman), a Dora Award, five Helen Hayes Awards, a Tony Award (Jersey Boys) and a Tony nomination for In the Heights. With an extraordinary lineup of six shows currently running on the “Big Street” (Xanadu, Avenue Q, Jersey Boys, In the Heights, Cry Baby, Gypsy) Broadway lighting designer Howell Binkley is at the top of his game.
When Kenny Chesney’s Poets & Pirates Tour played San Francisco’s AT&T Park recently, it was another in a long line of summer stadium shows with Brooks & Dunn, LeAnne Rimes and Gary Allan. But unlike the other stadium shows, this one featured surprise duets with Steve Miller and Sammy Hagar. The 200-foot wide stage was a showcase for the talent and the production as well. As a four-time recipient of the Academy of Country Music award for Entertainer of the Year, Chesney lives up to his title with the help of production designer Mike Swinford, production manager Ed Wannebo and a crew to match their considerable talents.
World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) was able to pump up the excitement surrounding its annual extravaganza, WrestleMania XXIV with lighting effects, custom graphics and a huge fireworks display by bringing the event outside for the first time. Not everything played out as planned but WWE still gave wrestling fans a night they’d never forget and broke the Citrus Bowl’s gate record by squeezing 74,639 people into almost every available seat.
The first North American Theatre Engineering and Architecture Conference convened in the Michael Schimmel Performing Arts Center on the campus of Pace University in downtown New York City on July 20 and 21. More than 250 people from nine countries attended the conference and participated in a total of 18 panel discussions covering such topics as “The Future of Stage Machinery,” “The Greener Theatre,” “Design for Value” and more. In addition, keynote addresses were given by Richard Brett and Hugh Hardy and the Plenary Session was led by Steven Ehrenberg and David Taylor.
The sk8rs on Centre Street in New York City go out of their way to seek out danger. The more dangerous, the better. I know this because I witnessed it first hand. I was in the City for the maiden voyage of the North American Theatre Engineering and Architecture Conference (NATEAC) last month. The conference was an excellent exchange of information and ideas about all things relating to the design, construction, and use of performing arts spaces.
Look Solutions recently introduced another addition to its family of haze machines with the Unique2. It has a bunch of new features that will make anyone in this business happy. For starters, it is so compact that you could fit it in your suitcase with room to spare for your clothes. But hey, who needs a lot of clothes on the road doing this job, right? So let’s get down to the business of talking about what this product can do for your show.
The advent of the blue LED in 1993 unlocked the potential for LED technology to be used in the entertainment lighting industry for a variety of applications, one of the most important of which is the RGB LED luminaire. Creative designers quickly discovered that these luminaires could be assembled in a matrix configuration and used for low-resolution graphics. But in the beginning, there were few options for the programmer to ease the tedious task of assigning color and timing to a matrix of RGB LEDs. Today, there are many more software and hardware solutions to make it quick and easy to convert a video file to a beautiful graphic LED display.
The case brought back into A&S Case Company the other day was old — 22 years old. But it was hardly the historic artifact you might think.
The band that had been using it all that time had no interest in letting it go, rather, they just wanted some of the interior foam replaced. That’s not exceptional in the experience of A&S Case, but rather typical. “There are cases being actively used out there that were made when the company was first formed in 1976,” says Bill Waskey. “They may have had a caster replaced, and of course they look a bit worn, but they are still very serviceable.”
Visual Light is a U.K.-based design house started by Nick Whitehouse in 2002. Bryan Leitch soon came on board as a design partner. Since then, the two have been working hard to become one of the most highly-regarded design teams in the world. Whitehouse and Leitch continue to collaborate on de-signs, striving to strike a balance between art and practicality. Some of their previous and current clients include Justin Timberlake, Coldplay, James Taylor, Kylie Minogue and Timbaland.
When you’re young and bulletproof, the last thing you think about is what might happen should you become unable to do your job. But it’s something everyone should plan for. How will you pay your bills? How will you feed your family?
I had the good fortune to have met him — an honor that I cherish to this day. During the 1970s and 1980s, I also had the good fortune to have worked at the company that he founded — the company that invented videotape recording. At that time, the company was a powerhouse, 6,000 strong and the dominant worldwide force in the AV industry. To this day, the work ethic that was a part of the company’s very name remains a fundamental part of my own ethic.