Scharff Weisberg are supplying the producers of La Bohème with two Catalyst systems to project supertitles onto the stage for its performance at the Broadway Theatre in New York City. Lighting designer is Nigel Levings, who also specified 10 High End Systems Studio Spot CMY and 24 Studio Color 575 automated luminaires into the show. Control of the Catalyst is via a Flying Pig Systems Wholehog II console. Fourth Phase New York provided the HES lighting and console. Lighting director is Vivien Leone.
La Bohème is the tale of the doomed love affair between seamstress Mimi and the writer Rodolfo set against the world of Bohemian Paris. This new Broadway production is set in 1957 and is sung in the original Italian with English surtitles.
Supertitles are projected onto various stage elements, an apartment and a balcony, as well as on two screens that float just above the action onstage. This is in contrast to a stationary screen above the proscenium or the backs of seats, farther out of the stage picture, which has been the typical approach. Scharff Weisberg provided the projection system (which, besides Catalyst, also includes two Christie L8 projectors and two Barco 6300 projectors) for the surtitles.
The Catalyst sends the text to various pre-programmed locations on the stage. The Catalyst, which weds moving-light technology to high-end graphics projection technology, allows video projectors to move images anywhere in three-dimensional space. The system is controlled from most programmable lighting consoles and uses a Macintosh CPU for image processing. Says Scharff Weisberg's Derek Holbrook: "Since we were throwing text onto moving scenery, and since the scenery was manually moved (by eight stagehands), it was not in the exact same place each night. With Catalyst, we could fix the position exactly, live during the show."
The production played previously in San Francisco prior to its Broadway debut. Scharff Weisberg provided the same projection package, including two Catalyst systems, for the West Coast shows.
A full review of this production appears in the January issue of Lighting&Sound International magazine.
(Lee Baldock)
