PROJECT

Hearsay

The Word from the Tech Table- an Assistant's Point of View by Robert Lilly

I got a call from a designer and ENTTEC rep named Jeremy Kumin who needed an assistant for a dance show in downtown Manhattan. Notes in Motion/Amanda Selwyn Dance Theater was performing their 8th annual season at Dance New Amsterdam on Chambers Street. Jeremy has designed the lighting for the last six years, each in a different venue with its own challenges. I threw my laptop in a backpack and rushed over- time was very limited on this project and Jeremy had some ambitious ideas.
The venue itself is a composite dance studio and performance space, capable of being configured for either use- although for us, it would be considered a blackbox with a quite low grid. The house rep plot is heavy on sidelight, with four folding booms each SL and SR loaded down with ETC Source 4 50 degrees. Front of house is scanty, being compromised by the seating area, but we were free to use quite a bit of backlight- two systems of high backs consisting of Selecon Fresnels and PC's, and a long row of cyc lights on a pipe that has a three color setup, which bounces off a muslin backdrop before hitting a translucent drop. In front of that there is a scrim to soften the effect. Since the tech and engagement period were so short, we could only change very little of the house hang, but the available equipment managed to provide us a wide range of beautiful options.

House gear was a 96 dimmer ETC Sensor CEM rack and an ETC Express 125 console, the lovable and reliable workhorse of the smaller theater set. To accommodate Jeremy's design,which included 4 VL2500's and 12 CXI scrollers, we needed a little more finesse. He decided to use LightFactory as the control system, on his personal laptop, and brought along the related DMX to Ethernet equipment and an Enttec Playback wing in his magic swag bag.

To quote the designer, "My meetings with the choreographer, Amanda Selwyn, and with set designer Tom Gleeson led me to believe that the most important lighting element for Hearsay was the manipulation of negative and positive spaces, which I translated into lots of gobos. But I knew I didn't have room there to hang a lot more lights, (dimming and time both being significant restrictions) so I decided to ask for some moving lights to get the most variety of gobos I could. Once that fell into place, I had to replace their board with my laptop running LightFactory, because of the sheer number of channels 4 VL2500s would added to the plot, but also because it sped us up so much."

Tech time was limited to 7 hours, and there were 140 cues to write, so we were looking to facilitate quick cue writing (and I was looking to facilitate quick paperwork production!) I personally had to learn LightFactory in a single day, and had no problem with the interface or use of it- to me, it was the portable board I'd always been looking for. But, I wasn't the one that was going to be operating for the show.

The house crew at DNA are mostly interns for the dance school, performing tech jobs for classes, and while being capable and helpful hands, we expected their technical experience to be somewhat limited. It was reasonable to assume their light board experience would be limited to the Express that lived in-house. While Jeremy and I did most of the programming and number-crunching, we had to focus on making it easy for the operators to run the show smoothly. This was made effortless by the Enttec playback wing, with it's easily understandable interface and traditional big GO button. Board Op Catherine Slusher made quick work of rehearsal, quickly adapting to the new gear and performing admirably in a 2 cue per minute show.

The first day we showed up, we loaded in the movers, scrollers, and Enttec control setup within about 3 hours. Focus took an hour also, then the remaining 2 hours that night were for technical rehearsal, and we banged out 40 cues. The next day we wrote a full hundred more in 5 hours, thereby finishing the first pass through the show. Jeremy handed over control of the laptop to Catherine on Wednesday, while Noel Carmichael, the stage manager, rehearsed the calling of the cues. The opening on Thursday went seamlessly, and things were so well in hand by Friday that the creative team didn't even have to show up, taking a well deserved day off.

Catherine did our daily dimmer check and setup and breakdown of the laptop and playback wing that constituted our control system. It never was needed, but she also setup and broke down a backup tablet PC loaded with LightFactory and the show file just in case. While I don't think that Catherine was quite ready to go out and program concerts, she managed to adapt to LightFactory within the space of a day, and in the future may help us do patching, cue writing and the works. I had only been using LightFactory for a few days, and still managed to point out a few shortcuts to Jeremy to speed up the cueing, considering how little time we had. He's the foremost LightFactory trainer in the US, but I think every designer can benefit from a little assistance.

-Robert Lilly
Assistant Lighting Designer, Hearsay

Further info about the company: www.notesinmotion.org
More about the venue: www.dancenewamsterdam.org