Cinderella ^4 Rendering | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

RENT and first Cinderella x4 Production Meeting

I am excited to announce that I am designing RENT at The Stage at Island park (formerly Fargo Moorhead Community Theatre).  The initial design concepts are very intriguing, and I look forward to joining the talented production team.

Also today was the first production meeting for Goosberry Park Players of Cinderella x4.  The design ideas presented include resurrecting an erector set of a truss last seen in Concordia College's Memorial Auditorium in the early '90s (think schedule 80 bolt color) and polished aluminium PAR 64s.

But for now, it is my last "weekend" of the summer and I'm in Grand Forks so I will keep this post short.

Summer theatre is about to pick up!

Innitial design meetings are happening for both the Gooseberry Park Players' production of Cinderella ^4 and Music Theatre Fargo-Moorhead's production of Chicago at The Stage at Island Park.  After a rather empty schedule in May, my next few weeks are pretty full.  Look for blog posts to pick up as the summer gets into full gear, including some more exciting news soon!

Research for Cinderella- Glee Style

The preliminary (i.e. subject to change) song list for the Gooseberry Park Players production of Cinderella^4 has been released.  It includes music ranging from More Than Words by Extreme to You're My Best Friend by Queen to Today Was a Fairytale by Taylor Swift.  It wouldn't be complete without some Ke$ha We R Who We R.  Since the show breaks into fully produced performances of pop songs, much like in Glee, I have the challenge of lighting a wide variety of styles of music.  I'm starting out by collecting photos of what the original tours actually looked like.  Katy Perry, for example, has strips of vanity light bulbs in one of her tours.  Michael Buble has florescent lights in different colors hanging vertically over the stage.  Queen, of course, has a wall of PAR cans behind them.  Now to try to figure out which ideas to incorporate and which ideas to scrap.  More on that later....

Medea (Unrealized Design)

WYSIWYG Rendering for Medea.

WYSIWYG R26

I had to drive to North Mankato for a package today, but I'm not complaining.  I have been using a student version of WYSIWYG Report R21 for the past few years now, but I couldn't do any rendering and finally my license expired.  Today in the mail, I received my dongle and CD of WYSIWYG Design R26:

ETC Source Four Fresnel

I know, I know... Fresnels are outdated, clunky, inefficient, and whatnot.  But, deep down inside, you have to admit they still hold a place in your heart.  Which is why we still are using 30-40 year old fixtures alongside brand new Source Fours.  USHIO had made some progress in modernizing the Fresnel by introducing a lamp that mimicked the intensity and color temperature of the HPL, but today a fresh breath of life has been breathed into the Fresnel.  ETC announced that they are introducing the Source Four Fresnel, which will use the HPL lamp and a modernized glass version of the old Fresnel reflector.  On ETC's promotional material for the fixture it states "Your lighting rig is now complete."  I agree, no rig is complete without a few Fresnels.  I don't know how long it will be before I see one of these, but I'm excited that they're finally available.