COSTA MESA, CA – Chance Theater's production of The Who's Tommy last summer got rave reviews for KC Wilkerson's lighting and video design. When the production was re-staged at Orange County's larger Segerstrom Center for the Arts earlier this year, Wilkerson expanded the number of fixtures in the rig. The new gear list included eight Elation Design Wash LED RGBW moving heads, eight Elation Design LED 60 Strips and three Elation Design Beam 300 moving heads. "One of the most appealing parts of remounting the show was the opportunity to revisit the design," said Wilkerson. "I had several discussions with the director (Oanh Nguyen) prior to production. Part of it was preserving what we thought worked, and the other part was expanding some of the original ideas and adding details.
"The venue (Founders Hall at Segerstrom Center for the Arts) is much larger than the Chance Theater (in Anaheim Hills, CA), with a higher grid and far more lighting positions," Wilkerson said, "so while many of the ideas were transferred from the original production, the interpretation was different, in some case significantly."
Among the expanded concepts were the creation of "color stories that were tied specifically to Tommy's three different ages and experiences, as well as tying specific colors to the pinball machine," Wilkerson said. "The biggest impact moment I wanted was during ‘Pinball Wizard.' Everyone knows how that song starts, with the strumming acoustic guitar, but then it launches into those two giant electric guitar chords, and I wanted those two chords to knock people back in their seats. Part of that fell to our very talented music director, Mike Wilkins, but the rest of it was up to lighting.
"The Design LED Strips ended up carrying a lot of the weight for the ‘Pinball Wizard' moments," Wilkerson noted. "We stacked them vertically on four trusses and used them as blinders. There are a couple things I like about them – first off, they resemble old-school mini-strip lights, which gave us a retro feel, but they are also RGB LEDs, placed behind a lens so they mix to create good, strong colors, including a spectacular blinding white."
One lighting fixture new to the remount was the Design Wash LED. "I switched from the Impressions to the Design Wash LEDs primarily because they have white LEDs in addition to RGB," said Wilkerson. "They also move really quickly and have a good dimming curve without the LED ‘dropoff' in the lower percentages."
The Design Beam 300 moving heads were also a new addition. "I chose the Design Beams for a couple of reasons," Wilkerson said. "They're only 300 watts, but they produce a super-bright beam that's very narrow. That was key for the World War II sequences as well as the scenes where Tommy becomes a rockstar pinball player."
Wilkerson said that he was also very pleased with the Elation gear's reliability in standing up to the day-to-day requirements of a theatrical production. "Everything performed beautifully for the run of the show."
For more information, please visit www.elationlighting.com
Photo Credit: Doug Catillier, True Image Studio
