NEW YORK—Two recent theatre productions have adopted FocusTrack, the production lighting documentation system. The Donmar Warehouse production of Hamlet used FocusTrack on its transfer from London to Broadway, and Lincoln Center’s touring production of South Pacific is using FocusTrack on the road. The Donmar Warehouse production of Hamlet, directed by Michael Grandage and starring Jude Law, used FocusTrack to document Neil Austin's lighting design during the show's run at London's Wyndham's Theatre. This record of the lighting was then used as the basis of recreating the show at New York's Broadhurst Theatre—where FocusTrack was also used for Les Misérables and Equus.
FocusTrack's record of the show helped re-create the show lighting while accommodating changes in the rig. Once the New York lighting was complete, associate Pamela Kupper and programmer Rob Halliday used FocusTrack to create precise documentation of the New York show lighting, allowing production electrician Jon Lawson and show electrician Thomas Lawrey to maintain it over the show's Broadway run.
FocusTrack has also been used to document the lighting for the U.S. tour of Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific, based on the production at New York's Lincoln Center, which was directed by Bartlett Sher and lit by Donald Holder. Produced by NETworks Presentations, the tour opened in San Francisco before touring in markets across the U.S.
LD Karen Spahn and touring crew members Thomas W. Ford, Patrick Johnston and Dirk Van Pernis used FocusTrack to generate lists of which lights were used in which focuses and in which cues in the show from their ETC Eos showfile, and then to photographically document the show lighting with FocusTrack driving the console to turn on the right light in the right place for each picture. FocusTrack now offers a handy reference for each focus in each touring stop.
NETworks previously used the system on tours of My Fair Lady and The Wizard of Oz.
Further information about Hamlet can be found at www.hamletbroadway.com ; further information about the South Pacific tour can be found at www.southpacificontour.com.
For more info about FocusTrack, please visit www.focustrack.co.uk.
