For Wilkerson, the larger-scale reprisal of Tommy represented an opportunity to expand the lighting concepts he had developed for this classic rock opera.
Lighting and video were especially important at certain key points in the show, Wilkerson said, beginning with the opening scenes, in which the designer displayed actual historic British World War II footage, to the use of different colours to dramatise Tommy at different ages, to the spectacular Pinball Wizard scene. As in the earlier production, Wilkerson chose products from Elation Professional to light up Tommy in the larger venue, expanding his range of Elation gear to include eight Design Wash LED RGBW moving heads, eight Design LED 60 Strips and three 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 Centre for the Arts) is much larger than the Chance Theater with a higher grid and far more lighting positions, so while many of the ideas were transferred from the original production, the interpretation was different, in some case significantly."
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."
(Jim Evans)
