Lighting designer Nic Ayres chose Robe for his moving lights, which are supplied by Southampton-based rental company GLS, along with the rest of the lighting kit and technician Karen Brown. The stylish and minimal video-based scenic design was created by Bruce French. This gives the stage its basic architecture and definition, with two different sized Element Labs Stealth screen panels upstage, and eight 11m fingers of Superlite truss loaded with VersaTubes forming a gently asymmetric arc above the stage.
Content for the VersaTubes and the Stealth has been custom created by Mark Video, and he and Ayres worked closely during production rehearsals to ensure that lighting and video combine into coherent and seamless visual pictures for the show.
Ayres chose Robe moving lights because he's used them before on numerous projects and knows they are reliable, bright and have all the creative tools he needs to produce an interesting and slightly leftfield show, the company says.
14 Robe ColorSpot 700E ATs were used in total, one hung on the downstage end of each finger truss, four more on the box truss mother grid, and two on the floor, all arranged asymmetrically.
Of the 12 Robe ColorWash 700E ATs, 8 were scattered around the mother grid, again in a random fashion and the other 4 were positioned on the floor - 2 on the deck and 2 on boxes off-centre.
Ayres particularly likes the animation wheel in the ColorSpots because it produces a totally different effect to a gobo. In Winter Kills he uses the animation wheel in conjunction with a gobo to produce floating textured light effects.
In creative terms, he wanted to produce a show that wasn't too rock or too pop, but hit the spot and exuded a period feel along with the video content. There are some classic theatrical basics including close control of Moyet's key lighting which is tightly co-ordinated with when she's singing, and Clark prefers to be dimly lit throughout. This leaves plenty of work for the Robes and also lots of scope for getting imaginative without being clichéd.
In addition to the 26 moving lights, Ayres' rig contains ETC Source Fours, 2 bars of 6 PARs and 16 PixelLines which are mounted beneath the 2 risers. All of this is controlled with an Avolites Pearl Expert.
(Claire Beeson)
