The Thorn,which has been staged yearly since 1998, breaks from ritual and adopts a more dramatic form, fusing Cirque du Soleil-type aerials, martial arts and state-of-the-art entertainment technology with emotionally powerful performances.
This year, the play raised the visual drama even further through use of a dynamic package of Elation Platinum Series and LED-based moving heads, LED Par and effect lights, and LED video displays with haze and special fog effects from Antari.
Illuminate Production Services of Sacramento provided nearly all of the lighting equipment, labor and production management for the five-week, five-state tour, which was out throughout March and was seen by nearly 75,000 people. Each year more than 60 professional and volunteer cast and crew join The Thorn to take the show on the road. In each city, the touring cast and crew is joined by hundreds of local actors and artists to bring the story to life.
Lighting design was handled by one of the youngest lighting designers around, high school talent Caleb Franke of Illuminate Production Services. Caleb was given a basic lighting plot from prior years to work from, but was given creative license to do what we felt would look best. The biggest change was adding vertical side fill trusses behind LED panel pods, which gave the stage more dimension and elevation compared to year's past. The project was designed in Capture Polar lighting design software and roughly pre-programmed to save time on show sites.
The Thorn uses a virtual set and in the past relied on triple-wide HD projection on a large white backdrop screen. This year, they used a 35K lumen projector in the centre and flanked each side of the stage with two offset columns of Elation EVLED 20IP LED panels that ran a variety of scenic graphics and gave a transitional layered look to the backdrop.
The EVLED panels, a medium resolution 20mm semi-transparent screen that emits a bright luminous intensity of 4000 nits, is semi-transparent (35%) meaning they can virtually disappear when not on. The LED panels also served as wings and entrances to the stage.
"The EVLED panels were extremely reliable," stated Rick Franke of Illuminate Production Services and Production Manager for the show. "We had spares on the tour put didn't need to use them. Some of the panels took some extra abuse due to props and sets being moved about and they still worked flawlessly every night."
Used to flood the stage in colour and break-up textures, as well as provide striking mid-air beam looks were a variety of Elation spot, beam and profile fixtures. Filling the rig at down- mid- and upstage locations were energy-efficient Platinum Series fixtures including 12 Platinum Spot 15R Pro's, 10 Platinum Spot 5R Pro's and 20 Platinum Beam 5R Extremes, while a pair of Platinum 35R Profiles with internal framing were used as primary key lighting fixtures.
"All of the fixtures performed great and held up really well," Rick Franke commented when the tour finished. "As with any tour there are bugs but Elation gave excellent support and occasionally contacted us to see if we needed anything. That is unprecedented service. It's nice to know that someone has your back and is thinking about you when you're on the road."
(Jim Evans)
