"Charles Addams, in his old cartoons, was very, very aware of light; there are a lot of shadows," says Katz. For her design, she wanted to create the feel of shafts of light coming through the closed blinds of the house. She was pleased to find the set design was moving in the same direction, "When I saw that the whole set is actually shutters, it was definitely a great taking off point for the design of the show."
The high walls of the set created an interesting challenge. "I did something that I have never done before," said Katz. "Every single light overhead is a moving light. We were able to get in some incandescent light because we have a lot of incandescent VL5s overhead. I think with moving lights you just need a little pinch of incandescent salt."
Automated lighting programmer Aland Henderson chose the PRG V676 lighting control console to programme the 110 moving lights on the show. Henderson noted, "Tim Rogers (programmer for Fela!) was doing a show on the V676 at the same time. So we were the first and second Broadway shows to use the new console. It was fantastic. I love having all of the buttons up on top. The amount of data that you can have, with eight touchscreens, is awesome."
Henderson worked with PRG's R&D staff to refine the shutter control function. "Most of our fixtures had shutters, which we used extensively," explained Henderson. "PRG improved the shutter control on the console for me. I have always been taken care of well by PRG. I definitely feel that the V676 is a good choice for theatre work. I find that it makes my programming faster. And, I'm comfortable leaving the desk behind for the crew that runs the show; it's easy to understand."
Katz agreed that the console was the right choice for the show. "The V676 console worked really great. It worked out extremely well, because there are so many things that can be done so much faster on the V676. I think that it's a good console for theatre work; certainly as we used it for moving lights."
(Jim Evans)
