Trevor Ashley’s adults-only Jurassic comedy has returned to Sydney Opera House for 12 shows only from 30 November to 12 December.
From The Lion King to Love Island, no one is safe! This critically acclaimed riotous musical comedy takes no prisoners. Expect ridiculous puppets, song parodies and a send-up of every movie ever made on or near an island – all brought together by the multi-award (losing) team behind Fat Swan, Little Orphan TrAshley and the smash hit The Bodybag.
“It’s an adults-only parody of creature movies filmed on an island so there’s a narrative to be told but at the same time, it’s a broad, cheeky and hilariously offensive style of performance that lends itself to some luridly ridiculous lighting,” commented lighting designer Gavan Swift. “So, I need to light the show like a play or a musical but there’s plenty of scope for some flash and trash.”
Gavan’s biggest challenge was translating the show from an end-stage, proscenium arch show to almost a performance in the round with the audience on all three sides. Now the lighting has to work from three viewing angles instead of just one which required more equipment and a complete re-plot of the show. Gavan says he roughly sorted out a lot of the basic programming using Vision.
A key element of the set is the inflatables including flowers, plants and even a giant gorilla’s penis!
“The hardest part of lighting inflatables is they may not inflate in the same, repeatable fashion so the focus needs to allow for this,” said Gavan. “The 10ft long, giant inflatable penis actually required less light rather than more to make an impact. Everyone can see what it is and the scenic art detail on it is quite humorous.”
The rig is largely from the Sydney Opera House with some hires from Chameleon Touring System. The moving light and LED part of the rig consisted of Martin MAC250 Entours, MAC250 Wash, ETC ColourSource Pars and MAC700 profiles from the SOH, with ShowPRO Fusion Bars and Ayrton MagicBlade-FXs from Chameleon. The MagicBlade-FXs replaced the GLP X4 Bars Gavan had previously used on the show and gave him another moving beam element that worked really well.
The show was initially programmed in 2019 during the initial season in Wyong. The conversion to the rig for the Studio at the Opera House was done through the Vision visualiser application so Gavan came into the theatre with a partially sorted show disk. The SOH programmer, Lucia Haddad, then worked with him as they updated the show file and then worked as fast as they could through the technical rehearsals to complete the show.
