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Bringing Brecht to Broadway

Bringing Brecht to Broadway

The Threepenny Opera, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s classic musical that opens this month at the famous Studio 54, is not your ordinary musical. It was adapted from The Beggar’s OperaThe Threepenny Opera written by John Gay in 1728 as a comedic satire about the interaction between the classes. The Threepenny Opera was written by Brecht in 1928, who used it as a focus for his new style of theatre. This style, which would become known as Brechtian theatre, explodes onto the stage in this revival, using modern conceits to fulfill Brecht’s original vision of the play. Lighting designer Jason Lyons completely captures the style and complexity of the piece as he brings his own touch to this classic work.

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Speed of Sound

Who:
Speed of Sound Worldwide (SOS)

What:
Freight forwarder specializing in production cargo for tours,corporate events and special projects. Also handles production cargo storage.

Where:
Headquarters are in Irvington, N.J., with an office in Rancho Dominguez, Calif.

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USITT Special Edition

ROSCO 1750 Fog Machine
The 1,500-watt fogger features a piston pump and continuous duty operation. Up to four machines can be daisy-chained and it runs from a DMX512 input or a timer remote. The standard unit with a piggyback remote retails for $695 and the DMX512 version retails for $795.

Rosco  •  800.767.2669 or 800.767.2652  •  www.rosco.com

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Working Your Crew in Foreign Lands (Like Philadelphia)

There are two main ingredients that I need for every gig; the local crew I work with and my “go-to” guy. I believe there is an art form to working with people and getting the most use out of each person based on their individual persona. The word “stagehand” covers a broad spectrum of people all over the world.

In the concert and theatre worlds, the lighting techs are often fortunate to work with IATSE (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees), or union, stagehands. These crews have been around the block and are pretty familiar with most gear that crosses their paths. They build different shows constantly, so they get to work with just about every gadget, light fixture or P.A. that’s out there. On the contrary, touring crews constantly set up the same light rig and P.A. every day. They don’t always see all the advantages of how other people may do the same job they do. You can learn a lot by watching some IATSE guys work.

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Pre-empting Plotter Envy

“If a man will begin with certainties, he will end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he will end in certainties.”

– Sir Francis Bacon, philosopher, statesman and author

Several years ago, a friend of mine got a pen plotter. It was a big, beautiful instrument. It was shiny and gleaming, and it stood on its own two legs in the corner of his office. I was envious of him and his plotter for two reasons—one was that he could create blueprints and crank out professional- looking drawings at will, and the other was that everyone who saw it immediately knew he was an AutoCAD stud. It was more than a convenient tool to aide him in his work; it was a status symbol.

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Exploring the ETC Congo Console

While ETC’s newest lighting console is considered “new” by most standards, the parents of the system would say that the console has been in gestation for more than 30 years.

The true heritage of the console began with Avab, the Scandinavian lighting console manufacturer that, three decades ago, had one of the two existing 999- channel boards, the Viking. With a simple, direct-access control structure, the Avab brand has maintained a strong presence in European markets ever since.

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Lighting the Way

America’s mega-churches are biblical in their proportions.

The largest church in the U.S. is Lakewood, a quasi-denominational congregation—more like a small city— that sprawls over five acres outside of Houston. At 150,000-plus square feet, the former Compaq Center, once home to the Houston Rockets basketball team, holds 16,600 churchgoers at a time for several services each weekend. It’s also a broadcast ministry, with two massive video monitors flanking the huge stage that the telegenic Rev. Joel Osteen shares with a band. The church market has emerged as one of the fastest growth areas for lighting and video in the U.S.

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Optics of Digital Projectors: DVD Technical Short Course from Optical Short Course International

Just when you were getting comfortable with automated lighting, along comes this new technology that demands that you get up yet another steep learning curve. Digital lighting, LEDs, low-resolution and high-resolution graphics displays and DMX-controlled media servers are little more than video with a new skin. But they are invading the lighting industry like it’s Omaha Beach on D-Day. Pause—press reset—reboot and begin again.

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You Say You Want a Resolution

You’ve programmed with media servers before, but on this gig, the client wants you to use some original photos from the company’s last office party. Or maybe you want to create a unique piece of content featuring the company’s logo. In either case, it’s inevitable that you’ll need to optimize your content. Do you fully understand how the quality of the image affects playback through the server? Let’s take a look at a basic but important concept of any type of media—image resolution.

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The Highly Defined Bon Jovi Tour

Lighting director Pat Brannon has been with Bon Jovi in one capacity or another longer than many of his colleagues have been in the entertainment business. But his current position on the tour is now in its sixth year.

“I started with the band in ’88. I was brought in by the LD at the time and had responsibility of over 200 Color Mags,” Bannon says. “From there, I was asked to be the lighting director in ‘89 and returned on the next tour as crew chief and computer motor operator and programmer. Before 1995, I was the moving light operator and programmer. So in reality, I have been with the band for 18 years.

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