Robe flies high with Goosemas in Space
- Details
Lighting designer / director Andrew Goedde chose Robe moving lights as the principal fixtures and worked closely on developing his design with lighting programmer / technical director Tony Caporale, using their 2023 touring rig as a starting point. From this they evolved some new concepts for the tenth annual Goosemas event.
They were then both delighted to hear that the band and their creative director Will Thresher moved away from traditional Christmas themes to embrace Goosemas in Space for this year’s show.
Goose has grown and substantially expanded its fanbase in the last couple of years, and for Goosemas 2023 wanted to make some big statements and give something spectacular back to everyone in terms of production values.
“We took this idea very seriously when imagining and programming the lighting,” stated Andrew, expanding that the theme offered plenty of creative latitude.
With no video playback or IMAG onstage or indeed in the venue, lighting and scenics were the main visual tools for getting the energy and magic off the stage and swirling around the audience, so Andrew and Tony set to work to produce something memorable with the assistance of 42 Robe Fortes, 32 MegaPointes, 46 Tarrantulas, 60 TetraX’s and 16 LEDBeam 350s.
Each of six flown mini diamond-shaped ‘pods’ were flown at different heights and depths in a symmetrical pattern - a derivative of the larger diamond shape seen on the tour. Linking the look back to the touring architecture was important but gave these shows the separate identity that Andrew wanted, and resembled large UFOs descending from space.
Every part of the stage was able to be hit by a light with these positions making it “massively flexible - having this much coverage really gave us all the options,” noted Tony.
Each pod was loaded with six Fortes which were the main profile and effects lights. Six Tarrantulas per pod constituted the base wash lights, and the front two truss sections of each pod were outlined with 10 x TetraXs. Beneath these was a line of pixel strip. Two short upstage / downstage orientated side trusses (stage left and right) were each loaded with five more Tarrantulas.
Out in the audience and around the periphery of the spherical shaped arena - new for a Goose show - were four ‘finger’ trusses each rigged with four MegaPointes used to immerse the audience with light, pulling them into the action onstage. The fixtures could also reach the stage from these positions if needed.
The LEDBeam 350s were not originally on the plot but were added to illuminate the assorted set elements produced by the scenic team led by Will (Thresher) and Sonny Flemming. “Andrew, Will, Sonny and I collaborated closely to ensure this all happened seamlessly on site,” commented Tony.
After prepping the rig at lighting vendor Gateway Studios & Production Services’ (GSPS) St. Louis facility, it was project managed by Conway McDonald-O'Lear.
Lighting control was run over a Cat5 network via sACN with network switches on the pods, so not a single DMX cable was involved, and each fixture was controlled via its own IP address.
Keeping everyone and everything coordinated was lighting crew chief Sandy Paul, working alongside Peter Spadaro, the lighting tech and floor lighting crew chief, lighting techs Danny McDonald and Martin Nguyen, with Scott Smith looking after dimmers.
FOH sound engineer Eric Loomis was also production managing, assisted by Gillian Pelkonen, and Sam King was the tour manager.
Stage manager Pat Dickinson kept everything moving and grooving in the performance space, Bubba W.G. Bulifant oversaw pyro - also amped up this year - working with Jordan Burkholder on SFX and pyro.
