Sarah McLachlan Shines On

Ready to launch into the next song, Sarah McLachlan suddenly stops and squints into the spotlight. A fan has come to the footlights with an ill-timed request. Lifting up her T-shirt, the fan asks: Would McLachlan autograph her bra? McLachlan repeats the request into the microphone with surprise and a laugh, while the audience collectively groans at the fan’s faux pas. McLachlan calls for a pen and signs. Now the fan lifts up her boot. She has another request. At this point, security guards grab the gal and guide her away.

LD Brent Clark rolls his eyes and shakes his head in disbelief at the show-stopping moment. The production designer, lighting designer and director said he and McLachlan wanted the show to feel “homey” for the audience, but disrobing was not on the drawing board.

To promote Shine On — her first album in four years and also the title of her tour — the award-winning singer, songwriter and musician wanted her production design to accomplish one thing: to close the gap between the stage and her audience.

“Sarah wanted to break down the ‘fourth wall’ — the perceived barrier between the set and the seats,” Clark explains.

McLachlan wanted the audience to feel comfortable. She encouraged interaction. Judging by the behavior of the fan, she more than met her goal.

The Comforts of Home

To keep it simple, comfortable and welcoming, the set was designed as a living room. McLachlan brought in her couch from home, Persian rugs to cover cables on stage, and her own decorative lighting. The six hand-etched glass Moroccan pendant lamps are bulbous and curvy, lit from within their colored shells with one or two clear 60W household bulbs. Now and then their etched edges catch the light, at times creating a mirror ball effect. Mostly they hang at differing levels suspended over the stage, and rise up and down depending on Clark’s mood. “She dug them out of a storage unit she has,” Clark explained about the unusual lamps.

To connote rustic cabin decor, five articulated “wagon wheels” outfitted with TMB digital festoon LED bulbs transform the space above the stage. Vancouver-based scenic company Scenic Edge made the wheels, which Clark can raise or lower, and tilt horizontally or vertically at degreed angles. Show Distribution provided nine 1-ton motors for all the automation in the show.

Draping the backdrop in a looped, casual fashion are 14 48-foot lengths of festoon strings with 45W glass bulbs, providing a backyard party feel.

During key moments in the show, Clark controls the appearance of three Pix 2.0 roll-down LED screens, each measuring 17 by 6 feet (HxW). The screens are also see-through, allowing lighting looks and the string lights to shine through. Their primary purpose is to display I-mag from four cameras or custom content through the two Hippotizer media servers.

Of the four cameras, two are POV and two are robotic. One POV camera is placed on McLachlan’s mic stand at the piano; the other is stage right looking toward her mic stand. One robotic camera is in the downstage truss to capture overhead shots at the piano, while the other camera at stage left gives Clark a good visual shot at the piano and a profile shot when she is at the center mic.

As with the set, Clark takes a “homey” approach with the overall lighting — again taking inspiration from the looks one might find in a living room. “I tried to keep it as tungsten-warm as I could, with lots of amber, red, yellows and CTO.”

Another way McLachlan overcomes that “fourth wall” — to make everyone feel like they are part of her living room — is to invite her social media contest winners in each city to sit on the set during her show. The couch didn’t fit onstage in Austin, so McLachlan called winners to the side of the stage so she could meet them.

McLachlan considers her fans and her crew as family, and Clark says that even though it’s been a few years since she’s toured, it’s onstage where she comes alive. “She does a lot of meet and greets and likes to talk to the fans,” he said. “She seems to enjoy being on the road and onstage.”

That family ambiance also extends to the touring staff. Everyone has worked together previously, so a closeness envelops the crew. One longtime crew member — and McLachlan’s longtime former LD — was Graeme Nicol, who died in February 2014. When Graeme was ill, he asked his friend Brent Clark to handle the upcoming tour for him, as he knew he couldn’t travel. Graeme’s memory is always on the minds of the crew, and Graeme’s face, displayed on the teleprompter, keeps a watchful eye on things during setup.

Lights, Cameras, Action

One thing that hasn’t changed is McLachlan’s longtime lighting vendor, again Christie Lites, with Solotech handling the video.

“Christie Lites’ service is always great, and the gear is always first class. I think we only replaced four lights on the whole run. But as I always say, anyone can get gear, but it’s the people that count. Christie has always had the greatest people to work with; that’s what matters to me,” he says.

All the gear is packed into three “really stuffed” trucks. The majority of the lighting rig features gear from Martin Professional: MAC Viper Profile heads, MAC Quantum Wash heads and MAC Aura LED heads. (See gear list, next page.)

Clark stays busy on one of the two grandMA2 consoles, running lights, calling followspots, calling the automation cues for the moving wagon wheel circles, and calling cameras. He finds it “comfortable” working on the grandMA 2 as well. “It’s my weapon of choice. I’ve used the original grandMA for 10 years and have used this Light version for three years now. I prefer it.”

The 32 Martin MAC Viper Profiles are “scattered everywhere,” he said, and used for their multiple features from fat beam effects to rotating gobos.

There are 18 Martin MAC Quantum Wash heads positioned throughout the rig, chosen for their overall set washing function. Clark likes the wash fixture’s versatility, allowing him to play with its three distinct rings of color for effects.

Seven Showtec Active Sunstrips are bordered on the audience edge of the stage up in the truss. “I can do individual chases on them and I use it a fair amount, but mostly as audience blinders.” Clark has added them to his lighting tool box most recently for other tour as well, mostly in Europe.                         continued on page 40

McLachlan’s main positions during the show are center stage, where she will sing with or without her guitar, and at the piano. To uplight her face at the keyboard, Clark has placed two Rosco HQ Light pads with CTO filters to give the cameras and fans a view of her as she plays. “She’s comfortable with the spotlight on her,” Clark says.

From ‘Hold On’ to Shine On

McLachlan’s introspective songwriting style is to lyrically bare her soul, then reach in and grab hearts with her enchanting, mesmerizing vocal range to go with it. Ballads such as “I Will Remember You,” “Building A Mystery,” “Sweet Surrender,” “Hold On,” “Adia” and “Angel” just cry out to a designer for the appropriate light and shadows to accompany lyrics of holding on to shining on.

This range of moods and moments is where her LD Brent Clark shines. A favorite moment is during “Adia,” in which breath-taking beams spread out behind McLachlan at the piano, bathing her and the instrument in a heavenly looking light. Clark describes it as “simple” in its effectiveness.

“It starts with two MAC Vipers on the floor behind McLachlan with the Dot gobo as wide as it can go, then as the song progresses the other floor Vipers fade in with the same treatment. That’s one reason I absolutely love the Viper; its zoom is amazing. Six (Viper) floor lights can back light the entire stage. I also get some really cool ethereal looks during ‘Fear,’ where the light looks so thin and fragile. The Vipers are amazing; I was still coming up with wild gobo looks at the end of the tour — six weeks in and I was still finding stuff!”

Sometimes Clark holds back the light to let the song shine through. “I was trying to find a way to convey the despair in the songs and try not to over-light,” he says. “For example, ‘Angel’ is just five lights in a CTO — simple; no gags. I was also looking for ways to make songs look otherworldly, like in ‘Fumbling Towards Ecstasy,’  ‘Fear’ and  ‘Hold On.’  On those songs, I went asymmetrical, with weird angles and dark colors. For songs like ‘Flesh and Blood,’ I tried to make the light bright and symmetrical, while ‘Song for My Father’ and ‘I will Remember You’ were sparse, with minimal lighting, because they did not need anything to enhance the song.

“To me, every song in the 28 or so that got played had its own life or theme,” Clark continues. “I tried not to repeat myself and give every song the respect it deserved. It was challenging but worth it in the end. We tried to make everyone feel at home, warm and invited…which I think we did.”

At the end of the show, Clark admits that the heart-wrenching songs mixed with the memories of his friend Graeme Nicol made it “a bit of a heavy tour, emotionally. There were nights I would start to well up. Then smile. There were days when I and Jamie Develoo — crew chief and also a good friend of Graeme’s — would look upward and say, ‘Really,
buddy!’ and then start to laugh. It was tough, but cathartic. Graeme was always beside me, I think.”

McLachlan’s Shine On tour of Canada kicks off Oct. 18 to Nov. 21. Her U.S. leg ran June 20 to Aug. 3.