An international cast of 36 dancers, singers and musicians led by Boulaye celebrate the vibrant music, colour and life of Africa in a stunning display of ceremonial dances, rituals and initiation ceremonies, all played to the hypnotic throb of the African drum.
Projection plays a major part in the show's visuals. The resulting project is the product of seven years of planning and creative evolution. Patti Boulaye herself originally approached XL Video's theatre and arts specialist Malcolm Mellows early in the production process, to discuss how the visuals she had in mind would work onstage in an AV context. Mellows came up with some technical solutions, and XL then worked with show production manager Ben Arkell to realize Boulaye's visual ideas.
XL Video's in-house graphics department, headed up by Chris Saunders and assisted by Steve Smith researched, compiled, edited and animated the vivid wildlife clips and other organic images used throughout the production. These are all stored on a DoReMi hard drive also supplied by XL. Two strategically placed Barco G10 projectors are rigged over the stage, positioned so they can both front project onto a cross-stage gauze for the intro, and then upstage onto the set and a projection screen at the back later on in the show. The muslin-sheeted polycarbonate-constructed set, designed by Christopher Woods, is finished with a layer of string and glue-like substrate which makes an ideal surface to receive projected images.
The initial projection sequence at the top of the show features specific historical and geographical information connected to the show, including the featured regions of Africa, etc, for which the projectors are tightly focused onto the downstage gauze. The set and upstage projections later on involve more abstract projections - textures, movements, colouration - fire, water, clouds and other environmental elements, which also work perfectly beamed from the same projectors.
The in house lighting operator replays the video cues manually, however XL Video also supplied engineer Mark Hughes to set up the equipment at the start of the six-week sold out run. "Working with XL has been brilliant" says Arkell, "The get in was extremely tight for time, and they were completely unflappable when under considerable pressure."
Lighting designer is Nick Richings and White Light supplies the lighting equipment, sound is by Purple Sheep.
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
