Programmer Rob Halliday says: "The fixtures were only a short distance above Jude's head, and when they were in the reset position, pointing straight down, he thought he was going to bump his head on them. It's unusual for an actor to notice the moving lights, let alone comment on them - so we were very amused when he started saying they reminded him of something from the Star Wars movies. More importantly, in this incredibly precisely lit show, his understanding of what we were trying to do was remarkable and his positioning was always spot on."
The show was a transfer the Donmar Warehouse production of Hamlet, first seen at London's Wyndham's Theatre as part of the Donmar's year-long West End season. There, the rig used the equipment specified to serve that season's four shows included a core of ETC Source Four luminaires.
Halliday says: "When the show arrived in New York, lighting director Neil Austin decided that he wanted to be able to control the lighting, particularly the head-high crosslight, more precisely, so we added 14 Revolutions with shutter modules to the rig. By replacing conventional Source Fours with Revolutions we were able to precisely adjust the position and shutter cuts from scene to scene, to contain the lighting to exactly where it needed to be.
"The Revolutions were chosen over other shuttering moving lights because of their low running noise and because the scroller module allows a precise choice of the required colours, rather than the approximations offered by colour mixing systems."
(Jim Evans)
