BELFAST, Northern Ireland – Production Services Ireland (PSI) supplied lighting and video equipment for the first Irish tour for An Appointment With Mr Yeats by The Waterboys, a concept musical performance set to the poetry of the Irish poet and dramatist WB Yeats. PSI's Sean Pagel came up with the lighting and visuals design using gear that PSI had provided for a one-off version of the touring show that had been staged earlier in the year at Dublin's Abbey Theatre.
"It is a great honor for us to be involved something as original, interesting and special as this show," Pagel said. "Mike Scott knows exactly what he wants and his attention to absolutely every detail is impressive," he added, of the Scottish founder of The Waterboys.
The shows were staged in a style comparable to a rock tour, with stops at venues in the 2,000-capacity range. Pagel started with a DVD of the Dublin show plus a full transcript, and worked closely with Scott to build the looks for the tour.
The lighting rig consisted of 12 Vari*Lite 2500 Spots, 16 Robe ColorWash 700s, 18 Source Four Profiles, 9 Cantata 1.2K fresnels, 4 x 4-cell moles and 2 MR16 Birdies at the front of the stage.
With a relatively limited number of lighting fixtures, each had to be multi-functional and used with precision. The Moles were used just for the encore, where the band played two Waterboys songs, at which point the whole atmosphere changed from an accessible but cerebral concept show to a complete rock out as a dynamic sign off.
The Sanyo XF45 10K video projector was rigged at the FOH position and beamed onto two surfaces. The first was a 4-meter-diameter circular screen stretched over a trussing framework. Taking full advantage of the flying facilities at all the venues, this was rigged so it could be flown in and out at the appropriate moments, appearing center stage behind the drums, so it was low, intimate and connected to the band.
One of Scott's original ideas was that the circular screen in the show should resemble a moon, complete with an underplayed touch of mystery and magic, and it was flown in and out when needed.
All the video content was commissioned by Mike Scott and programmed onto two Green Hippo media servers. Some of it, stored on a Hippotizer, was MIDI triggered by drummer Ash Soan's Mac Book Pro running ProLogic Express. This was linked to a Hippo Express at FOH, used as a Zoo Keeper and triggered by Pagel's Avolites Diamond 4 console running Titan software.
Upstage, behind the "moon," was a 14-by-8-meter white silk, revealed by a black drape in front of it being-kabuki dropped. The silk was lit by six Robe ColorWashes after the reveal, and used for two projection pieces, a cloud effect, and a film made from animated stills edited by Scott about the 2009 post election protests in Iran, which ran during "Let The Earth Bear Witness."
It was a busy show for cueing, Pagel noted. "It's also the most complex show we have done to date in terms of linking the Hippos and coordinating their timing and triggering both with the timecode and manually," he added.
Pagel's crew of three included Joe Byrne, Brian Crowe and Michael Jarvis, who looked after the projection. Byrne also managed the Hippos and the MIDI timecode triggering. There were also no production rehearsals, so he spent a week in PSI's WYSIWYG suite to make sure those elements were ready for the first performance.
The tour is scheduled to continue in the U.K. into early 2011.
For more information, please visit www.productionireland.com.
