Lighting designer Philip Gladwell has also been with the creative team since the first show in Las Vegas and for the Australian tour, he created a complex, dynamic all-new lighting design, using a rig supplied by TSL Lighting.
Rigging positions in the Spiegeltent were tricky but the team designed a ground support mother truss which allowed an enormous weight to be hung. However, nothing outside of the tent’s ring of pillars could hold any substantial weight so they kept the bulk of the rig to the mother grid and had to be sparing and creative with the other positions!
Once rigging hurdles were overcome Philip turned his attention to the infamous ‘Spiider Grid’ a key element in his design.
“I wanted to treat those 36 lights as a single lighting fixture similar to having a chandelier above the stage. For practical reasons, they have to split open to allow the drum kit, the rain effects and the aerial act to fly through. It also does a very good job of masking the aerial preparation above which is a side benefit.”
Whilst Rachel O’Toole is the production designer designing the overall aesthetics of the tent, Anita La Scala and Rob Bissinger deliver the scenic design and it was Rob with Don Gilmore (The shows Production Director) who designed the mechanical system that moves the Spiider Grid open and closed. The amount of lights on the Spiider Grid varies from venue to venue depending on the size of the stage and in Sydney, there are 36 Robe Spiiders all perfectly evenly spaced forming an oblong directly over the centre of the stage. This grid can ‘slice’ in half to allow scenic items to fly in and out and is pixel mapped to create impressive effects.
“It creates a flat roof of light which we pixel map across, but also delivers great beams of light and fill the stage with a traditional top wash” explained Philip.
When the Spiider Grid splits open for the rain effect, a cluster of Martin RUSH Pars are revealed to downlight the rain and similarly for “serenade” a big live musical number in the show, a couple more High End SolaFrames are exposed to toplight down onto the drum kit. Located above the Spiider Grid is a Smoke Factory Data 2 and a couple of AF1 fans directing the smoke straight down.
“One of the lighting effects of the show that I really love is the addition of the Robe MegaPointes because even when all 36 Spiiders and all 18 SolaFrames are on, they simply cut through to do effect lighting,” added Philip. “Even though there are only 12 MegaPointes, where they are positioned six either end of the stage at an angle so the nearest to the stage is the highest, they create brilliant shapes on the stage no matter how much light you have on.”
For followspotting, BlackTrax is deployed mainly on the High End SolaFrames as well as the Spiiders. The female MC is the only cast member to wear it the entire show because Philip discovered that BlackTrax becomes increasingly hard to hide when the guys take their tops off!
The perimeter of the stage is effectively lined with GLP impression X4 Bar 10s these are used a lot in the show for a modern take on footlights but also creating interesting air effects. In the overseas productions, they are used in conjunction with BlackTrax. Unfortunately, this is not the case in Sydney as they were used to highlight the singer at the stage edge and due to Covid-19, he is not allowed to sing close to the audience. Philip hopes it’ll make it back into the show as he says it’s a great moment.
“The GLP impression X4 Bars are brilliant and have such a strong presence in the show,” added Philip. “They’re just a great fixture and when we first used them on Magic Mike four years ago, they weren’t so commonplace and we were lucky they had been invented as I’m not sure what else we could have used.”
With the entire tent interior acting as one large performance area Philip is challenged to ensure every nook and cranny can be lit.
“We have this great big stage in the middle that they only spend about 50% of the show on!” he laughed. “However, the choreographer Alison Faulk and I genuinely work very closely to ensure the best outcome.”
A total of 38 Coemar LEDko Full Spectrum Profile Spot Lights were used to light the corridor around the outside of the pillars giving Philip a spotlight for any cast member in that area. The Coemar fixtures were not Philips first choice as he had asked for ETC Lustres, however, after a shootout, Philip discovered that the Coemar fixtures were brighter. “We control the show from an EOS console and obviously EOS talking to Lustre means the colours are perfect,” he said. “So we had to do a bit of colour mixing to make it work but that was OK, as fixtures they’re really good. We also use them to do some highlighting of the Candy Shop Bar as well as a general stage wash plus they are the backup in case BlackTrax fails. (which so far has never happened)”
The Coemar fixtures are always running at a soft glow as this corridor is used by the wait staff and audience during the show and small ETC Source IV Minis are lighting the stairways.
A large semicircle of Martin RUSH Pars is used to downlight the glass shelves where a fair bit of action takes place so that those sitting in the balcony area don’t feel left out. Ringing almost the entire perimeter of the tent are 78 OXOLight Pixyline 150, a pixel strip described as a cheap wall washer that was added at the last moment.
“I realised quite late in the design process that all of the walls at the back of the tent were going to look very dead if I didn’t light them,” explained Philip. “But in doing so I was adding a lot more fixtures to the rig and Gaz Clowes (our Senior Production Electrician) along with his team (Ben Nichols & Dave Thom) were already prepping the rig! TSL was fantastic helping us out they through in the Pixel Line and said “if you need it we can talk about the extra rent and if you don’t we will take it all back with no charge” They have been brilliant throughout the design process.”
The four pillars that are not part of the mother truss each hold six Ayrton MagicDots to dissect the space and diagonally shoot across the stage. It had to be a small fixture so as not to interrupt sightlines but it also needed to be fast and punchy.
“Basically, they’re used as an effect light,” said Philip. “They don’t have to light anyone – they just do strobing, spinning and flashing. They do it well and they’re a lot of fun plus they are unique to the Australian production.”
A lot of work went into planning for cabling and infrastructure with Gaz Clowes & Don Gilmore working closely.
“We have catwalks in the roof with a network of cable trays that are sub sectioned off so we don’t have cables that shouldn’t run next to each other running next to each other,” Philip elaborated. “It’s a very neat and incredibly complex system but because this show has to bump out and move, it’s loosely in cable trays and then tied off at a couple of points. It’s not all loads of cable taped off to bars because I can’t imagine how many thousands of metres of tape we’d use if you did it that way!”
The Australian stage is built to tour and so it packs down to six pieces that are pre-loaded with hydraulics, automation, front fills, subwoofers and more cabling. The show has two MDG Atme Hazers under the stage which do a great job of filling the tent with beautiful haze that is consistent with no clouds.
The lighting and Blacktrax is programmed (“brilliantly” says Philip) by Liam Jones on an ETC Eos Ti console and run on a pair of ETC Gios, a primary and a backup, as the control position is small. The show is predominantly run on timecode, to cope with just over 1000 cues! many of them incredibly complex incorporating multi-cell control alongside pixel mapping as well as the more normal cue content.
As well as lighting the interior of the tent, Philip lit the bar working closely with Rachel O’Toole at the entrance to the venue with a couple of hundred lightbulbs and some LED tape all controlled by an ETCnomad Puck. It’s run as a separate system and can be controlled via a touchscreen by the staff.
Magic Mike Live Australia is scheduled for a six-month run in Sydney, before moving to Melbourne in June 2021.
