Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC), Queensland Theatre and Brisbane Festival delivered the world premiere of Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe, adapted for the stage by Tim McGarry.
Director Sam Strong initial conversations with the design team were all about doing the best theatrical version of the book they could. He always emphasised it wasn’t about doing the book on stage, but rather doing the best theatrical adaptation of the book – for example, how do you do the things the book can’t, the things that live performance is good at?
“The lighting of this production was just as much about joining and blending all the other design elements as it was about it having its own voice,” remarked Ben Hughes, lighting designer. “With the incredible scenic and costume world created by Renee Mulder and Craig Wilkinson’s amazing projection design, I knew that much of my job was to bring those worlds together with the actors.”
The biggest challenge for the production team, as it normally is, was time. With Covid-19 playing havoc with rehearsals, it wasn’t always possible to rely on expected timelines for when a scene might be “ready” to look at, or when bits and pieces could be worked on.
“A lighting design is normally the last thing added to a production and it requires all the other elements before it can come to life,” added Ben. “The pandemic can make that a bit difficult.”
A lot of the set electrics were quite simple and old fashioned eg. flown flats with wall sconces. There were quite a lot of practical fixtures set by the cast, with various light sources in them, from classic incandescent bulbs through to hidden bits of LED strip, all wireless and dimmed via RC4 wireless dimmers and battery packs. Queensland Theatre Technical Coordinator Lachlan Cross is a master at making battery packs disappear into pracs, even 3D printing custom battery holders for specific tight spots.
The rig was predominately the QPAC Playhouse stock, augmented by some Lustrs from Queensland Theatre stock.
“I added a Claypaky Sharpy Plus from Chameleon for a particular effect,” said Ben. “The QPAC Playhouse has just had a major lighting upgrade, so instead of a few hundred classic ETC S4 profiles there are Prolight ECLIPSE CT+ LED 15/30° in most of the front-of-house positions and a fixed beam version of the same fixture for the booms. The overhead of the new rig is Martin MAC Encores, split 50/50 between washes and spots. Having a predominately moving light overhead was particularly useful, given that access for focus would have been exceptionally time-consuming. The overhead fixtures were rigged on dropper flat-truss bars for maintenance access. I used the Queensland Theatre ETC Lustr2 LED profiles (with wide zoom lens tubes – 25/50) in discreet lighting slots in the set walls, rigged on Global Truss U-Drops, and also on a back-of-proscenium perch position.”
With space offstage of the set walls at an absolute premium and an awful lot of traffic back there, Ben had to be fairly careful of how much lighting could fit. He used a fixed boom offstage of each door, with an extra “floating boom” able to be preset in certain locations for certain scenes on each side. This maximised space but got some fixtures in the right location when required.
The video component of the show was huge, with video designer Craig Wilkinson (Optikal Bloc) an integral member of the creative team. The video was programmed in Watchout, with Barco 40k and 32k projectors and short throw lenses.
“A huge shout out to Queensland Theatre Technical Manager Daniel Maddison, who beautifully managed both Craig and my requirements throughout the pre-prod and production period,” commented Ben. “Having a Technical Manager who understands both departments and was able to act as a central repository for both designers was instrumental in the whole process.”
Lighting Programmer Scott Barton did some pre-viz with the rig, particularly to give some “starting point” positions and to get some of the more complicated preset focus positions at least roughed in before production week. A significant number of lighting cues were triggered from the main sound and vision control in QLab, so the timing for the large sequences could be set and locked to the sound design. Scott also did some incredible console work to make Ben’s life easier with the colour capabilities of a rig in which just about everything had a colour changing capability.
According to Ben, it’s always the thing you don’t think of that makes a memorable moment. One of the smallest scenes of the show, certainly the one lit in the smallest way, was just a low-tech flown-in bare bulb, against a huge doorway backlight from some ETC S4 Pars, with a bit of low FOH side cover.
“On opening night a character walking into the scene managed to smash the bare hanging bulb with their Samurai sword – completely not their fault of course, but we’d managed to get through technicals, dress, and four previews without any problems, so it was a pretty unexpected occurrence,” said Ben. “Given the glass smattered over the stage and the scene upcoming had lots of floor work a quick curtain-in show stop was called. Quickly cleaned, curtain up and actors getting on with it after. The entire team handled it beautifully, and I was reminded about what the live theatre experience is. Luckily I’m a big fan of using 12 or 24V lamps for flown pracs, given their large and hard-to-break filaments, so there was no danger to anyone beyond a quick clean up job.”
Needless to say, the globe was moved out of swinging range for the next show!
Photos: David Kelly
