This is our schools first musical in covid conditions and we decided to do it outside in our school's amphitheater. I, along with two co designers Maya and Taylor, designed lighting for this outside show. W ran into a lot of road blocks trying to come up with a light plot outside and trying to navigate through power, information/DMX and other problems that came up. However I am incredibly proud of the design we made even if it ends up not being used again because of the show being postponed and other factors (check the happenings page for more info). 

Our light plot consisted of 12 LED ERS front lights, 6 LED par foot lights, 4 LED par high side lights and 7 LED par "cyc" lights. We tried to convey emotion through bold and dramatic color and light because even though the setting of this show is the early 1900s it is a more modern show and calls for more modern lighting. 

Each of the main characters had a light color associated with them that would frequently appear when they were on stage, for example, Phoebe had purple, Sibella had pink and Monty had a red and blue combo. In dramatic moments such as when Monty gets punched or when Lord Adalbert dies we punched in with red light or slid it up dramatically to give us a very theatrical effect. 

Almost all of our programming had to happen in tech week because we had to move the board outside and couldn't set our lights up until the Saturday before tech, so we couldn't figure out addresses and patching and even most of our channels ended up getting changed through tech week. I programmed the whole show myself and did all of the technical stuff like DMX and setting up our light plot and board operating during the show because I was the only one who had done anything lighting related before. Maya took over spot design and cueing, we had three spot ops and Maya did the cues for them. 

One of the most difficult things that ended up being much easier than we thought was our set up and take down. Since we were outside we couldn't leave our very expensive and rented lights outside over night so we had to take everything down and set it up every day for tech and show. I cam in about 2 hours early everyday along with a few others so we could set up. We also had to cover our lights with trash bags for tech because of rain. 

I hope to be able to have LED lights in March but who knows, we are still going to attempt these same effects with conventional lights.