Tech Sunday

We are in the period traditionally known as "Hell Week". It is a time when 16-18 hour work days are more the norm than the exception. Tomorrow is the cue and level set for High School Musical. I've been working the past few days on hanging and focusing the lights in preparation for cue and level set. Tomorrow afternoon about 1 pm we will begin setting each of the light cues for the show. Every time that a major mood change or location change happens in the show there is generally a lighting cue to help define the new location or a light cue which helps to amplify the mood. Today I divided the stage in 20 acting areas. Each area has at least one light focused on it to provide natural daylight scenes. In addition we have 12 lighting bands of color from the sides of the stage and and 5 lighting bands of color from above the stage. There are special lights only focused on the area that one of the actors stand in when the rest of the stage is dark. Setting the lights for each area, color band, and special on the stage including followspots is a time consuming and challenging job. The Yokum family (Todd, Kim, Emily, and Daniel) have most graciously volunteered to "walk the stage" during the cue and level set. They are filling in for the performers in the different areas. For instance I will ask Kim to walk from Stage right to Stage left so that I can watch the lights on the actors face to make sure it remains consistent. Other times I will have the actors move from one area to another to see which area is the brightest so that we don't pull the audiences focus during an important scene with lots of people. In staging the higher the person is the more dominant they often are. We have a set that at the back the actors head is 10 feet in the air. Jim Keeney is building about a dozen windows made out of shrink wrap weatherizing sheets. We are spray painting these with white flat spray paint and then shining colored lights on the back of them so it can change the mood during the scene. These dozen windows also have to have the light balanced on them so they aren't brighter than the person standing in front of the windows. Musicals are generally much harder than non- musicals. Children's plays which rely on lights of location changes are always harder than adult shows. High School Musical has about 20 location changes in the script and also has music. In designing the lights for a musical each time the songs emotion changes generally the lighting also reflects that. Some musical have taken 15 hours to set lights. Some non-musicals 2 hours.

Today was spent trying to free up dimmers. We have 48 dimmers each able to hold a maximum load of 20 amps or 2400 watts. Since most of our lights are 500 watts, 750 watts, and 1000 watts we can only put so many lights on each dimmer. April needs specials on the school announcer, and various people in different isolated areas for cell phone calls. Since I can only put one 500-750 watt light in each special that means I have a limited number of dimmers to work with for my color bands, and for the main acting light on each area. I spent part of the day trying to put two areas together onto one dimmer instead of two to free up a dimmer to be used for a special.

Our current lighting system was bought approx. 20 years ago. The technology has changed a lot since that purchase. Many of the lights I used today were purchased used when the theatre was founded 45 years ago. The stage lighting industry is slowly moving towards more LED lighting instruments that are far more energy efficient and much easier to handle while running since a lot of the energy isn't transformed into heat. A single 500 watt light puts out so much heat that you have to wear gloves just to touch the metal housing for each light. Last years electric bill for the theatre was almost $20,000.

So tomorrow Kim, Todd, Emily and Daniel will we spending lots of time sitting in the dark while April and I work out what the design will be. We add lights for the first of 4 dress rehearsals. Wish us luck!