Bass Fam Creatives’ highly acclaimed production of “ORACLE – The Myth”, recently played at the Roslyn Packer Theatre in Sydney with Jason Bovaird of Moving Light Production in charge of the lighting design. Mystical and mythical Oracle is a journey through the stars that combines dance, burlesque and circus acts.
The stage design is kept simple, with a pillared archway atop some stairs and broken pillar bases on the short catwalk stage. Keeping the set design minimal allowed it to embody every era and story through the dance and allowed lighting designer Jason Bovaird to tell the story through the use of colour for each of the Zodiac signs.
Oracle is a high “Las Vegas” style show that combines circus aerial acts, high-end choreographed dance pieces and vocal singing all bringing together a storyline that tells of love and devotion. The original brief given to Jason was that of making the show look like a mini “Cirque du Soleil’
Creative Director Bass G Fam was very definitive in what he wanted in each lighting cue and together they worked in achieving the final lighting design along with working closely with choreographer Jo Magliolo who was also very clear in what she wanted in each dance and circus act throughout the 2-hour show.
“It’s wonderful when you work with a director who knows how to use moving lights,” added Jason. “A large part of the design was having a full LED moving light rig in the air along with a very clever floor package of side booms and moving head wash units within the set elements of each side of the stage.”
The main set element of Oracle is a series of columns of old ruins spread across the stage. This Jason to be able to use Chauvet LED mini radio DMX lights to uplight each pillar around the set. Another set element was the star cloth that was used to depict the elements of the universe.
“The other main set element was the use of projection throughout the show that was mapped across the layers of the set all run through cue lab and triggered with the audio tracks throughout the show,” said Jason. “The lighting and projection needed to be able to work together as one depicting various scenic places and times throughout the production.
The colour palette for the production was saturated colours comprising reds, greens, purples, blues and ambers. Each act had a specific colour that was in the costumes. For instance in Act Two “Leo” has a palette of blues, reds and ambers that depicts the fire twirling and heat of the act. During the act, the performer twirls fire on the downstage podium with a saturated blue wash to accentuate the fire twirling.
Being a touring show around Australia, one of the challenges that Jason faces is not having the same fixtures all the time in each theatre. The show has been programmed on an ETC 6k ION that has had palettes created of positions and colours allowing the relighting in each venue to be quick and accurate in the short time frame that the show has before its opening night.
“This is where our LIGHTSKY LED 600 spot came into great use as well as our LED Art 8-watt cans and the ShowPRO Pluto 2000 moving head wash range,” he said. “The LED ART series of moving heads, particularly the new 600-watt range of spots, is a wonderful touring moving head weighing only 34kg which is great when you can’t hang heavy moving lights in the air. The gobos and CMY colour in the spot are an excellent choice and being able to tour them means that we will always get the same looks each time in the venue. The output of these lights is excellent being a LED-based globe it is very punchy.”
The rig consisted of 10 x LIGHTSKY 600-watt moving spot, 16 x Vello XP 900 LED moving wash, 6 x LIGHTSKY Bumble Bee 330w spot and 18 x Chauvet LED E915 profiles on the perches FOH. Added to that are 28 x VELLO ELF 18watt Slim Par 12 as a backlight colour wash on stage, 16 were on the upright truss as sidelight and four were lighting each of the truss stands on the floor. On top of the Orchestra Bar were four Vello XP 900 LED moving wash which provided the top light for the centre audience podium which also had high-end aerial acts above the audience.
The floor package that was used consistently throughout the show for the aerial acts consisted of the Lightsky Bumbee 330 spot. These lights provided the sidelight and uplight for the performers.
“The movers on FOH did much of the picking up performers and highlighting the action,” explained Jason. “The movers on top of the truss were used for focussing on hard sidelight for the performers and creating a “roof-like” feel over the stage The movers on LX 2 and 3 created heavy backlight and various gobos as texture on the floor. The Plutos and the Vello lights are both extremely punchy and quick and are a wonderful light and the zoom on them is excellent – being 8 degrees to 70 degrees allows you to use them for highlighting areas and focus.”
The rig was controlled by MLP’s ETC 6k Ion lighting console running over 2 x five universes. The whole rig was supplied by Luminous Productions (Sydney), Moving Light Productions Australia and partner Lighting Lab. The team at Moving Light Productions have also forged a relationship with Lightsky helping them to develop new state-of-the-art moving lights.
One of the great and powerful things that MLP has these days is the ability to pre-plot and update the show files like ORACLE on MLP’s new Capture visualisation programme purchased during “lockdown” from Clearlight Shows Australia.
“Having the ability to be able to pre-plot the show before you walk in the theatre is just a huge advantage and given in these types of shows where the bump-ins are quick and plotting time is minimal, you want to be able to be ahead of the game before you arrive.
“Once we arrived at the theatre, all we had to do was update the positions of the movers on stage. It’s the way forward for myself and the business as when you are doing back-to-back productions you don’t have the time to be spending 40 hrs plotting in the theatre. The other great thing is that the director can see each cue and what it looks like by taking snapshots of the monitor for them to see. Being such a short season I operated the show to take the pressure of the stage manager for having to call the 350 or so lighting cues. I knew where every cue went so it was easier for me to operate.”
From an operational point of view, the show is not “called” and is completely programmed with times next to each cue and a detailed description of each cue and a time so that the lighting board operator can follow the show file. Being such a visually cued show, the operator (Michael Richardson) and head of lighting (Chris Payne), can easily update the showfile when relighting it from each venue.
Director – Bass G. Fam
Choreographer – Jo Magliolo
Lighting Design – Jason Bovaird (Moving Light Productions)
Head Of Lighting – Chris Payne (Moving Light Productions)
Lighting Board Operator – Michael Richardson (Moving Light Productions)
