Making Use of Time When You Have It
by Ryan Bible / @professor_bible
“The Wolves” at Christopher Newport University
Last week, TheaterCNU opened our production of Sarah DeLappe’s wonderful play, The Wolves, in our studio theater (a black box style venue). One of the major upsides of working on this particular show is the fact that it is an extremely low-tech show. There are no sound cues directly called for in the text, the only sound cues I’m providing are incidental music (pre-show, scene transitions, and post-show). On the lighting front, our production is equally straightforward. The action of the play takes place in an indoor inflatable soccer dome, example here. It’s roughly the same time of day in each scene and the location never varies. In my design, aside from the ending sequence, this is a true “lights up, lights down” design. The relatively easy lift in tech’ing this show was a welcome break in an otherwise hectic semester. I teach two classes per semester and CNU produces two main stage productions each semester and I serve as the lighting and sound designer on both. That requires that I make good use of every available second of time in the theater in order to complete the litany of tasks needed by both design areas.
The cadence of our usual tech process is on Saturday I have the space for cue setting and work notes from 10-6; on Sunday a 10 of 12 technical rehearsal; Monday evening a tech run; Tuesday/Wednesday dress rehearsals; and on Thursday an invited dress rehearsal. The Wolves followed that typical cadence but my lighting cues setting took about 70 minutes (most of which was spent updating and perfecting “By Type” focus and color palettes, and updating EOS magic sheets). Ten out of twelve ended at three PM instead of the usual ten PM. By the first dress rehearsal, both lighting and sound were in a state that could comfortably be shown to an audience.
This less demanding production opened a huge opportunity to work on a litany of items that I’ve wanted to do but have not had the time or bandwidth during more demanding productions. Most of the things I was able to work on are the type of project that needs the context of a real production in a theater space. A summary of some of the things I was able to do are listed below:
Programmed an over-the-top pre-show sequence, paying homage to game six of the 1996 NBA Finals. I also took the opportunity to solidify my understanding of Qlab’s OSC network cues. The roughly ninety-second sequence had approximately twenty lighting cues were triggered via OSC cues in QLab. The network cues were in a timeline group cue which allowed me to move cues in time to match specific beats in the audio waveform. For simplicity of programming as this sequence was added after cueing/numbering was completed, in both EOS and Qlab, the pre-show sequences were in separate cue lists. In the main EOS cue list, I linked into the pre-show list when house to half was triggered. The last cue of the pre-show sequence was then linked back into the main list. On the Qlab side, I added an auto-followed “Start” cue directly after the incidental house music fade-out cue. The rest of the Qlab sequence fired automatically.
Patched dummy fixtures of all the instrument types that TheaterCNU owns in high channel numbers (1000+) to make them easily portable between show files. I then updated all my color and beam palettes to be “by type”.
Reworked how I handle blue lights backstage and replaced aging incandescent fixtures with new LEDs purchased from a big box hardware store.
Setup an old, idle iMac with the latest release of EOS and designated it as a full-time Playback Status Display for our Stage Managers.
Add the capability to provide a video monitor in the backstage crossover/dressing room hallway.
Video Monitoring for “The Wolves”
Fully EQ’d the loudspeaker system.
Added Real Time Analysis capability to our sound computer and learned the basics of how to use it.
Qlab window for "The Wolves"
Finally learned how to arm/disarm the variations of our pre-show announcement programmatically in Qlab. We use a standard evening version, a talkback version, and a matinee version. Based on this article from the indispensable Qlab Cookbook.
Purchased and set up the Theater.Lighting domain and deployed this blot.im blog on it.
Working on this production was a welcome break from the usually intense schedule of a heavier tech show. I found it gratifying to have the time and energy to work on all the small projects I was able to complete during the tech process. When and if you find yourself with a simpler show, I highly recommend getting those “someday” projects done!