Sugarland tour gets festive looks from Chauvet
- Details
Sugarland carried this enthusiasm over to planning the 2018 summer tour in support of their new album. Nettles, who had worked with lighting designer Chris Lisle on her solo tours during the duo’s time apart, called on the Nashville designer to come up with some out-of-the-ordinary festive looks for the 48-city tour.
Lisle and his team at CLLD, which includes associate designer and programmer Erik Parker, obliged, conveying the excitement of the duo’s reunion in light with help from 22 Chauvet Professional Rogue RH1 Hybrids, supplied by Bandit Lites.
“During an early discussion with the artists, they mentioned they wanted people to feel the stage has transformed into a circus tent,” says Parker. “The idea was to take people to a different place as they sat in the audience - a place that many of us enjoyed going to growing up.”
To turn this vision into reality, the CLLD team formed a truss structure to create a “tent frame,” which they connect with fabrics to suggest a big top circus look. Through projection video, they are able to re-imagine that big top surface throughout the show.
“We bring in the industrial look of ropes hanging as you would in a circus and tie it all together with video screens that showcase circus posters,” adds Parker. “As the show builds, the environment transforms a little, but the theme of being in a circus never changes. Our entire lighting team of Daniel Rehbein, Cody Cheatham, Chris Noll, and Savannah Harden, as well as each other department under the leadership of production manager Mark Miles, deserve a lot of credit for making it all work seamlessly.”
Adding critically important colour, as well as a sense of excitement and glamour, to the visuals on stage are the variety of looks that the CLLD team is creating with its Rogue RH1 Hybrid fixtures.
(Jim Evans)
