EC1 brought in Ben M Rogers to look after the scenic and lighting design for both productions. The OperaBabes show was designed as a fusion of classical styles with rock and pop technologies, mixing album tracks with incidental music and dance to create a narrative thread to the show. Rogers' lighting rig, supplied by Lumen Art, included eight Martin Pro MAC 600s and 16 Clay Paky Stage Zoom 1200s, along with 60 Par cans and an Airstar Lumex 2000 4kW balloon, which made an impressive entrance rising up behind the stage during Act 2 and remaining at a height of 10m over the stage. Rogers programmed on a Wholehog II from Stage Electrics, using his WYSIWYG Perform Suite for extra programming time during daylight.
With a large performing area (20m wide by 10m deep), Rogers spread the moving fixtures over the set and backlight positions to fill the stage with beams of light which where enhanced with the use of an MDG Hazer and four Antari DMX Smoke machines. He chose to establish a basic colour palette for each song, moving between tints and heavily saturated colours and making use of the Stage Zooms' glass gobos for softer natural textures. He also re-fitted the metal gobos with a selection of laser cones, lines and ripples to cover some of the more dynamic effects required.
For Evita, Rogers used a quantity of Par 16s for up lighting and three MAC 600s per side positioned on the floor, with the rest of the rig flown - this time tripling the number of Par Cans and including 12 Clay Paky Golden Spot 1200s, used primarily for spot pick-ups and break-up washes across the stage and back wall.
Sound designer for both shows was Gareth Owen, with equipment provided by Beirut-based Fida Zalloum, with additional equipment from Orbital in London. The FOH system (positioned on towers off-stage to reduce clutter and allow access for actors in the auditorium) was Turbosound Flashlight, with two TFS-780L subs and two TFS-780H tops per side, plus Turbo Hilight THL-4s. Amplification was from Lab-Gruppen and QSC. Owen used XTA's new DP226 processors and a DP224, which allowed him to set small delays between the two Hilight boxes, helping to find a way around coupling problems. The artists were mic'd with Sennheiser's new HC2 headset mics, while radio mics were the Orbital-supplied 20-way Trantec S5000 system.
Evita featured a 14-strong orchestra and musical director Kevin Amos asked for individual monitors for the band, so a quantity of Turbosound TFM-330 wedge monitors were used in the pit. A pair of Turbosound Hilight THL-2s where flown downstage left and right to provide on-stage monitoring.
Klark-Teknik DN360 Graphic EQs processed all the monitoring except for the stage monitors, which used a spare channel of Owen's DP224. A Soundcraft Series Five Monitor desk was engineered by Chris Mace.
With so many inputs from cast and band, FOH mixing duties were divided between a 48-channel Midas Legend (for orchestra, cast, sound effects and reverbs) and a 40-channel Soundcraft Series Two submixer (for keyboards, drums and percussion). Outboard processing included BSS DPR-504 gates, dbx 1066 compressors, an XTA D2 for the keyboard group, Yamaha SPX-990s and a Lexicon PCM91, while XTA SiDD processors were used for two of the leading performers.
