Chauvet shines on The Great Passion Play
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This year, the power of this story has become even more moving, thanks to a balanced and richly coloured lighting design by Chandler Mann and Cameron Edwards of Momentum Lighting.
“Having grown up in Eureka Springs, I have a special attachment to The Great Passion Play,” said Mann, who now works out of Houston. “The production has captivated visitors season after season, but its lighting needed to be upgraded. Our previous system had no LEDs or color mixing and was operated from an old dimming console.. It was time for a change.”
Mann and Edwards brought that change to production, which runs seven months a year, with help from 40 COLORado1-Quad IP65 fixtures and eight DMX-4 dimmers from Chauvet Professional, along with a new ChamSys QuickQ 20 console. They placed 15 of the RGBW COLORado washes on the front wall of the stage, replacing 20 old Par64 fixtures. The remaining 25 COLORado 1-Quad units have been positioned in various points on the set, such as rooftops, trees, and boulders.
“The COLORados on the front wall are not only excellent colour mixing fixtures, but their RGBAL engines are also good replacements for tungsten daylight coloured fixtures,” said Mann. “The ones we have sprinkled throughout the set bring a new level of emotion to scenes that should have been lit in colour all along.”
To illustrate his point, Mann tells of the impact that colour has had on the scene where Jesus carries the cross up the Via Dolorosa to the site of his crucifixion. “This is a point of intense passion that becomes even more powerful with color,” he said. “The flogging scenes and the travel up the Via Dolorosa are now being cast in rich crimson and violet, which awes the audience and creates more vivid memories for the families who have come to witness this story.”
The eight DMX-4 dimmers controlled by the ChamSys QuickQ 20 also played a pivotal role in transforming the show. “Since this takes place in the times of ancient Rome we wanted to control lights to reflect different realistic situations, by doing things like having smoke machines mimic bread ovens, fog machines seeping low clouds, and having candlelight effects,” said Mann. “Having the dimmer packs placed across the underside of the set allowed all those pieces to be controlled via DMX and timecode as opposed to the past when they were manually operated by cast members.”
