Lighting was designed by Nick Richings and is being looked after and operated on the road by chief LX Tom Wright. HSL supplied the majority of the rig absolutely brand new, "Which is excellent," declares Wright - including Avolites ART2000 dimmers, moving lights from Robe Show Lighting and Martin Professional, City Theatrical auto Yokes, Chroma Q colour scrollers, and a large generic rig consisting primarily of Source Four profiles and PARS, plus regular PARs and cyc units.
Scrooge is the latest in a long list of theatrical productions being serviced by HSL with others including This is Elvis and Festen.
Richings' design starts off relatively dark to match the murky tone of the show. He's designed it with the scope to create plenty of interesting ghoulish effects for the humbug and ghost scenes, and also to move the whole look and feel up-tempo as Scrooge finally thaws towards the concept of Christmas. Choosing a wide selection of fixtures has given him the latitude to recreate the many mood and location changes required.
The rig is hung on a selection of house bars at each venue. In addition to these, they're touring a front truss and two onstage side ladders which are flown at each theatre.
Six of the eight Robe 1200 ColorSpot ATs are hung overhead on the house bars, with the other two on the front truss. There's four ColorWash 1200s on the side ladders and four MAC Performances on LX1, the latter picked to create specific effects needing the framing shutters, "They are great for their size and are just packed with features!" comments Wright.
All the effects like set and gobo washes and movement are done with the Robe fixtures. It's the first time Wright has used them, and he says: "They are bright and very smooth."
There's 12 Auto Yokes with Source Fours attached, and these also have scrollers on the front. They are joined by another 22 scrollers on various PAR cans, and four of the new DHA Digital Light Curtains, positioned upstage, doing the back-washes.
Wright controls the rig with a WholeHog II console - using all four universes of DMX - complete with a Hog PC for backup. Dimming is taken care of by three 48-way Avolites ART2000 racks, newly purchased by HSL for the tour, along with one of their custom designed-and-built power distribution units for the moving lights.
The rigging supplied includes two 1 tonne Lodestar motors, seven half tonnes and two of the quarter tonne ProStars, which are used to lift the audio department's line arrays.
Wright and production electricians Keith Johnson and Simon Targett, went to HSL a week ahead of the tour to prep the rig, where taking full advantage of the space at their Blackburn HQ, they built and flashed through everything before packing the boxes. "HSL were excellent," says Wright, "It was a bit of a dream having a totally new rig - even down to the Socapex and TRS cables."
HSL also supplied them with a generous spares allocation, as is their policy with all tours, although they've not had to break into it with the kit being so new!
(Chris Henry)
