CHICAGO – Billy Elliot the Musical, staged in London, Sydney and New York, is now going worldwide. Its U.S. tour kicked off in Chicago at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts, Oriental Theatre, on March 18. By the end of 2010, a production will move to a different U.S. city every three or four weeks. Previous productions had always included set pieces that revolve and emerge through trap doors, requiring penetrating the floors of theaters, which will not be possible on tour. The set has also been modified and optimized for a new touring format.
Lighting designer Rick Fisher also took the opportunity to adapt the lighting. For the U.S. tour, Fisher decided to move the show onto an ETC Eos console. "The show might be running for another five or 10 years," said Fisher, "and we wanted to have a future-proofed control system." Marc Polimeni is the Eos programmer for the American tour.
Fisher also refined his rig to suit the changing venues and productions. "Each time we do a new show, I look at where the lights are and see if we can remove some or replace them with different types of lighting – so, for example, last time I looked at the rig and realized that some fixtures had just two or three focus positions, while others rarely moved. This meant I could reduce the number of movers by 10-15 percent for the Chicago show."
Touring means streamlining the tech process. "We needed to be able to keep the get-in and get-out times as short as possible," said Fisher, "so that the first performance in a new venue could be within the week of moving. We've packaged the lighting to stay on the trusses as far as possible, while preserving the useful mix of equipment in the show, keeping the look as theatrical as it is at the moment. Even after some consolidation, we still have some 50 ETC Source Four Revolutions among the total of 120 moving lights. There are now as many movers as conventionals."
Billy Elliot is also slated to kick off a touring production in Asia this summer, at the LG Arts Center in Seoul, South Korea.
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