A Little Night Music for Robe at RADA
- Details
Robe enjoys a close ongoing working relationship with RADA, making their latest technologies available for students to use across the three main venues. Paul’s design for this production utilised Robe’s DL7S LED profiles and the new Spiider LED wash beam moving lights, together with other moving and conventional fixtures.
Paul’s acclaimed career started at RADA – he is a 1973 alumnus of the Academy’s technical training course – and features extensive work across the genres of theatre, opera, ballet and dance. It’s earned him recognition for lighting a diversity of shows from large-scale West End and Broadway extravaganzas to incisive performances at venues like the National Theatre, Donmar Warehouse and the ENO, to the bleeding
Paul collaborated with a student team on this show, all of whom benefitted from his fund of experience and knowledge. The Academy’s head of production lighting Matt Leventhall oversaw the process which was one of the most technically ambitious musicals RADA has produced to date.
Designer Jane Heather and Edward Kemp wanted the narrative to feature both projection and lighting in its visual treatment, and the need for the two media to coexist and work fluidly together was a key starting point for Paul’s design.
Projection content was created by projection artist and video designer Nina Dunn.
Before compiling his fixture lists, Paul visited the Robe factory in the Czech Republic and saw both DL7Ss and Spiiders in action at the demo facility. Once he decided he wanted to use these for the show, Robe assisted in making them available. They were used with a number of ‘house’ fixtures in residence at RADA which include Robe LEDWash 800s and 600s, DL4S Profiles and CycBar 15s.
Rigged above the stage, the DL7S Profiles created different areas of lighting and were used to define locations or suggest different spaces in-between two mobile projection screens that were used as ‘walls’ and moved around. This allowed action to run simultaneously in different areas and locations.
“As the screens were moved”, explained Paul, “the idea was that the DL7S Profiles could ‘morph’ using their very accurate shutters to denote the different areas seamlessly between scene shifts”. The fixture’s ability to create straight shuttered edges at full zoom was a big asset in achieving this objective. The DL7S Profiles also provided “useful gobo work” for the more atmospheric scenes in Act 2.
The DL7S Profiles are now part of RADA’s moving light stock for use across their venues, and this production was their first show.
The four Spiiders came from CEG and created an intense backlight effect together with a bright, highly saturated blue wash onto which the video content was layered.
Being a musical, there was plenty of call for saturated colour, an area where most LED luminaires excel, and the six LEDWash 800s and 10 LEDWash 600s all had their fair share of ‘moments’.
The DL4S Profiles were primarily used to augment the gobo looks and to add texturing, using the standard gobo set with the addition of a custom ‘Alpha Ray’ gobo.
Working alongside Paul were assistant lighting designer and follow spot captain Teresa Nagel, lighting programmer Daniel Smith, stage manager Emily Melville-Brown, DSM Danni Haylett and projection programmer Cameron Affleck.
Running concurrently to A Little Night Music was a studio performance of Blues for An Alabama Sky in the GBS Theatre for which RADA student lighting designer Richard Heappey used four Robe CycFX 8s, four LEDWash 300s and six DL4F fresnels.
(Jim Evans)
