Lighting designer Nancy Schertler chose to use Selador X7 • 48 fixtures with its seven LED colors for the Tony-winning regional theatre, Children’s Theatre Company (CTC) on their recent Mainstage production of Suessical.
“Helen Huang used intense colors in both her scenery and costume designs,” says Schertler. “Because the scenery was basically a unit set, it was necessary that my design control the palette to create a leitmotif that would underscore both the characters and the storylines. The Selador units were an important tool in making this work.” Schertler found the Selador units were the right choice for Suessical because, “the color control is fabulous, and the reaction time of the lamps allowed for a particularly swell lightning effect.”
Rebecca Fuller Jensen, lighting and video coordinator for CTC explains that Suessical was just the opportunity that CTC had been looking for: “We had seen a demo of the Selador units before, about five months ago and asked if we could try them in production. It just happened that Nancy was asking for an LED wash fixture for her lighting design for Suessical. She also had seen the Selador units in demo before and liked them because they had a better, warmer white color than other units.”
Jensen points out the challenge facing Schertler, saying, “The sets consisted of blues, yellows, and greens and then the costumes were like hot pink. Nancy had a wide range of colors that she was trying to light and she was using the Selador units to accent some of the colors. We hung the units vertically in our box boom positions, closest to the stage. They were basically used as a full stage color wash. We channeled them separately, so the top half of each unit was controlled separately from the bottom half; we put different lenses in each half section to change the beam spreads. The lower level was able to be wide to light the performers and the higher level was narrow and focused on the scenery.”
Selador’s Novella Smith was pleased to have the X7 • 48 fixtures used by the company. “We are proud to be able to supply an LED fixture that allows designers to light both scenery and people without having to sacrifice any quality of light. We were especially pleased to be used on a production at the renowned Children’s Theatre Company.”