White Light in Toxic Avenger horror show
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The show is written by Tony Award-winning duo Joe DiPietro and David Bryan and is lit by Nic Farman, who has worked on the show since its first London run. He comments: “I’ve worked with the director, Benji Sperring, many times before and my brief for this production was to have a lot of fun and be brave with my design. We often like to create bold stage pictures filled with colour and, for this show, it was especially important to create the cartoon style world in which the musical is set.”
The show first opened at the Southwark Playhouse last year and Nic believes that the musical still embraces its B-Movie origins. He comments: “For the West End version, we wanted to ramp up the rock feel of the show and add more gig lighting to a rocky soundtrack. Similarly, the Southwark version was in thrust, whereas the Arts is in a proscenium arch, meaning we had to think about how to keep the audience as fully engaged as they were in the smaller space. As a result, takis, the designer, gave us a low apron to help get the cast down to the audience levels and I was allowed to light right out into the crowd.”
This change in space meant that Nic had to make some additions to his previous rig. He comments: “I have drawn on a lot of Chauvet Professional units, who have been particularly supportive of me and the show. We have Maverick Mk2 spots, Maverick Hybrids, Ovation FC profiles and Ovation battens which all allow us to create great impact with colour and beam work. We also hired in some GLP X4s and X4 Bar 20s, with the bars working really well as backlight blinders. I also spec’d Elation Six PAR’s which have become my go to LED par because of their high output.”
He continues: “The other facet of the design is that we inlaid sections of the floor and pipework that makes the set up with pixel tape. Clancy Flynn, my production electrician and programmer, built a system around my design. We have 50 universes of Enttec pixel tape in the set, all controlled over ArtNet from a HippoCritter triggered by the lighting console.
“The control system was designed to maximise animations over the tape while keeping DMX channel requirements to an absolute minimum. WL supplied the Hippocritter media server that manages the images played over the tape, as well as the Pixelators that act as the LED drivers. They also sorted out the sale of the tape, PLink injectors and drivers we required."
(Jim Evans)
