LONDON — A new musical, based on an Oscar-winning Australian movie, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of The Desert is using a grandMA full-size console to control the moving lighting rig. LD Nick Schlieper created the lighting design for the show, which premiered at the Star Casino in Sydney in late 2006. From there, it toured Australia and New Zealand before coming to London, where it’s being produced by Back Row Productions and the Really Useful Group (RUG).
PRG supplied lighting equipment was supplied by PRG, and RUG asked freelance programmer Stuart Porter to program the moving lights using the grandMA. Porter called the console “a stable, powerful, reliable and well supported platform.”
The fast-paced show includes with 20 production numbers and a set that stars Priscilla, a battered bus that rolls across the Australian outback. It also features over 500 different costumes.
The style and feel of the lighting matches the energetic storyline. Schlieper said his challenge was to find a way to translate the “great outdoors” in a theatrical setting, making sure “that didn’t feel tokenistic, but could become its own coherent world.” He needed the lighting to be flexible and adaptive while maintaining continuity as it helped depict Australia, real and imagined.
The grandMA is controlling 74 moving lights, including a combination of Clay Paky Alpha Spot 1200s, Vari*Lite VL3500Qs, VL1000 ARCs with a mix of shutters and irises and Martin Professional fixtures.
The moving lights are used for all the standard focus and chase effects as well as for some very specific tight shuttered focuses, which need to be reproduced with pinpoint accuracy. “The grandMA does this incredibly well,” Porter said.
In addition to these fixtures, the console is running ETC Source Four Revolutions (with color scrollers), six DHA Digital Light Curtains and a myriad of inset LEDs. Stage One created set elements for the U.K. production.
The grandMA is also triggering V4 video servers running projected video onto the bus and through the PixaLine Net, a custom-built LED cloth.
Porter has also just started programming for LD Natasha Katz on Whoopie Goldberg’s Sister Act The Musical using a grandMA full size for its opening this month.
Photo by Tristram Kenton
For more information, please visit www.malighting.com.
