Acclaimed singer, songwriter and producer Matt Corby returned to stages across the country in June, bringing his celebrated live show to audiences nationwide with The Tragic Magic Tour.
Lighting designer Ben Kocsis says that Matt’s only real direction for him was: “Can we have a bunch of those Edison Bulbs around the stage?” To which he replied, absolutely!
“We also both agreed we didn’t want to do video, so we wanted to explore other ways of bringing colour and texture to the stage,” Ben added. “When designing for Matt, I think my main thought is always “just make it sexy” – the music and Matt’s incredible vocals are the show. I just need to support that. We knew we didn’t want video, and the Edison Globes became the main focal point of the design, so I just wanted to build around that.”
The previous design used red drapes and lots of tungsten, so Ben wanted to make this show look different even though it had similar elements. That’s how he arrived at a white US scrim with a star cloth behind, then dressed in a silver Austrian drape.
“Nothing groundbreaking, just a classic and classy design element that allowed me to get many looks out of the stage set,” Ben explained. “We also changed our riser configuration and dressed this in a silver dress to match the US drape to help tie everything together.”
Ben says the hardest part of this tour was the first show in Auckland, a B-rig show, so he didn’t get to see the full design until the second show in Adelaide. They also had a couple of one-off Festival shows in the run, so it’s always hard to put something together that works across multiple stage sizes and different overhead rigs, etc.
“I think we managed to achieve a consistent look for most of the shows,” he said. “For example, we rolled into Vivid Sydney in between two headline shows. They had a very specific festival rig design and limited rigging options. However, we still managed to hang our drape and our Edison Globes so it still looked like “our show”, which I was pretty happy about.”
The touring rig was supplied by Phaseshift Productions, including the 36 Edison Globes on individual dimmers, 24 of which were hung randomly from venue trusses, with the remaining 12 placed on the floor on mic stands dotted randomly around the band.
The three layers of US soft goods (star drape, a white scrim, and a silver Austrian drape) were all uplit by a row of 12 GLP X4Bar20s, which are just workhorses at this point.
“This allowed me to get a really even cyc wash or flip them around and zoom them in to get that classic wall of light look,” commented Ben. “We then had six Martin MAC Viper XIPs on the US floor, which are becoming my new favourite workhorse spot fixture. My hot (or not so hot) take is the OG Viper is still the best spot fixture ever, but sadly they’re getting on now. Their optics and colours were unmatched, but the XIP is the best thing I’ve found since.”
Twelve Hexaline P2s were on 2m uprights, and a bunch of 4-Lights on the floor helped support the tungsten element of the Edison Globes. Finally, eight Martin MAC Aura XIPs were dotted around the stage for side/band lighting.
“Shoutout to Pat (My Crew Chief) and Lawrie, who was our truck driver but couldn’t help but get involved, haha,” said Ben. “Anyone who knows me knows I cut my teeth for years at Phaseshift, so they’re basically family at this point. Always happy to have them out on the road with me.”
Literally two days into programming this tour, MA Lighting dropped V2.4, which Ben had been waiting patiently for months. He decided to make the leap, as he knew he wanted to take advantage of the new Phaser Recipes, so he upgraded and started again.
“I’ve been on MA3 for a couple of years now, and it’s been a slow burn,” remarked Ben. “V2.4 finally feels like I can have a consistent and reliable workflow. There are still bugs and still features I want to see, but it’s getting there. I hope MA can keep pushing out updates and tighten things up. But I appreciate that they are listening to their user base. In the last two years, we’ve seen many features added to the console that were requested by the community.”
This show is all run manually, with no timecode, as Ben does not think Matt’s music calls for it (other than maybe a couple of tracks), and he also still enjoys running live shows.
“I have a Cue stack for every song with all the main looks and scenes,” he said. “Then I have several handles for busking things over the top. I also program all of the key light into the show but then have Group Masters and Overrides on handles. I like to feel things out and adjust levels on the go. Every room is different, every rig is different, so no matter how it’s programmed, it will never look the same. I hate being programmed into a box, so the more control I have at my fingertips, the better.”
Ben would like to finish off with a shoutout to Matt, his band and all of the crew, adding that they are some of my favourite humans to tour and work with, and it’s always a great time.
