It almost sounds like a setup to a joke: David Byrne of the Talking Heads and Fatboy Slim, the British DJ and record producer behind such hits as “Rockefeller Skank” and “Weapon of Choice,” wrote a musical about Imelda Marcos, that shoe-loving corrupt first lady of the Philippines.
If that’s the joke, here’s the punch line: Here Lies Love is an unforgettable theatrical experience that’s more like a dance party than a night at the “the-a-tah.” The show begins as soon as the audience enters and is totally immersed into a festive atmosphere among dancing patrons at a tacky Manila disco straight out of the 1970s. Make no mistake: Imelda Marcos and her husband, President Ferdinand Marcos, were corrupt, disdainful, power-hungry narcissists, but boy could they party, and ticket holders who enter the LuEsther Hall at the newly remodeled Public Theatre in Manhattan are all invited.
But what’s a dance party without the right atmosphere? A DJ instructs the audience, most of whom stand in the middle of the makeshift dance floor throughout the entire show, on the proper moves for line dancing. Video cameras film the Marcos on their rise and fall from power. And, of course, the scene is complete with disco balls, dancing girls in bikinis, hunky Filipino dancers in tight pants—basically everything you need to be immersed into the decadent lifestyle of the Philippines’ foremost power couple.
However, this party cannot truly get started until the atmosphere is just right. For that, director Alex Timbers brought in a regular party brigade of theatrical designers. Justin Townsend designed the dynamic lighting that captures the disco-era depravity perfectly. Peter Nigrini’s projections help move the story along by making sure the audience follows the historical happenings along the way. The scenic design by David Korins is decidedly tacky—in a good way—demonstrating how perfectly gaudy perceived glamour can truly be, while Clint Ramos’ costumes recall another era that is so near and so distant at the same time. And yes, Imelda’s deranged prom dress-style gowns with those inescapable puffy sleeves are part of the production’s charm.
Thrilla In Manilla: Lighting
For his part, Townsend was tasked with bringing together three important elements to create a unified lighting design for this unique theatrical piece. He had to find the balance among musical theatre, club lighting, as well as straight drama with “clear, muscular lighting,” he says.
“We start in a club,” Townsend continues, referring to the dance party atmosphere the audience is plummeted into as soon as they enter the space. “We had to understand the muscle of a club that we’re in, and there needs to be a real excitement to the room that’s constantly shifting. The music is brilliantly blinding and exciting, and there’s a lot of mystery in that space, so allowing ourselves a room where anything could happen was a really important first step. There were some exciting challenges to figure out how the lighting could be nimble and dynamic.” He adds that using Altman R40 Striplights as essentially audience blinders really set the tone as patrons enter the theatre and are hit in the face with magnificent pink light.
Townsend says that he and the other designers, along with the director, discussed how best to land on that disco era. “We talked a lot about how specifically we should land in that period of disco or how much it should be a place the audience loves,” he explains. “The spirit of disco is there, so taking the icons of those clubs and amplifying them was the way to go. All these LED fixtures and moving lights didn’t make any sense to that particular era, but if we didn’t have them, the events themselves would seem dated to a modern theatre-going audience. We are using modern tools to represent an era and amplify it, rather than feeling locked in to a certain aesthetic.”
While the unique staging of Here Lies Love might have caused some LDs pause, Townsend was ready and willing to dive in and figure out how best to illuminate the venue and the actions of actors that seemingly encompass the audience at every turn. “I have done a lot of work in many different types of spaces, so I enjoy figuring out how to light complicated things,” he says, adding that, with a “downtown” budget, a lot of the tricks available in Broadway rigs probably wouldn’t make it into the Public Theatre. “We worked with Christie Lites to get a nice moving light package, and that meant every single piece of equipment in the room had to have multiple points of view. There was nothing that was just for one task; we really had to come at it aggressively.”
Townsend insisted that the pieces of equipment “earn their keep” by facilitating a variety of functions and effects. “My personal aesthetic is to not have the audience become too familiar with the look of a show,” he explains, adding that “the 16 [Martin Professional] MAC Auras are pretty amazing lights that can spot down to nothing but also flood to wide open really quickly, and, like the choreography, they can move and snap.” He adds that the Martin Professional MAC Viper Profile is the “workhorse that had to really pop and slice through the haze.”
He also got to try out MAC III Airs, also from Martin, for the first time, and they worked well in the small space, but he hopes to use them to their full capacity in the future. And while he has glowing reviews for the Air’s functionality and abilities, he’s equally enthused about the fixture’s aesthetics. “I’m really excited about the big piece of glass on the front of the lights,” he says. “It gives a really good look to them in the air. I’m really interested in the light quality that comes out as well as what the fixture itself looks like.”
However, in this age of lights moving at the speed of, well, light, and the advent of LED technology, there is one source in Here Lies Love that is usually reserved for Wal-Mart and public housing: fluorescents. Throughout the space, Townsend has strategically placed fluorescent tubes sheathed in pink or blue filters, thus adding another layer to the theatre’s concept as a down-at-heel disco. “Those hits of color are really exciting because they help land the pieces but prevent them from being too sentimental,” he explains. “We can turn on these big hot pink fluorescents in the middle of a number and change the aesthetic from what we’re seeing as a purist musical theatre idea to something that’s set in a club and recognizing that.” The fluorescents also became a means by which to focus the audience, since the action moves throughout the room, from one side of the space to the other in the blink of an eye.
The Book Of Marcos: Projection
Projection designer Peter Nigrini discovered that he carried a unique burden when it came to creating the projections for Here Lies Love: his designs are integral in telling the story on stage more so than the other design elements or even the lyrics. “The challenge for me was to provide the book to a bookless musical,” Nigrini explains. “The projections consist of so much history and context in order to create a narrative musical out of what is essentially a collection of pop songs, so there had to be a creative and fun way to do that and not lose the storytelling along the way.” Here Lies Love was initially a concept album; it was not fleshed out with any through-line or narrative until the initial workshops a couple of years ago.
Still there was the challenge of creating an immersive environment in a relatively small space utilizing every square inch available. “The obvious mandate for the design team was that the show needed to take place in a 360º environment…with a moving audience,” Nigrini says, adding “and this gauntlet was thrown down, and the entire design and production team had to embrace it.”
Another daunting task was making the LuEsther Hall look and feel like a legitimate nightclub. This meant creating an atmosphere for the pre-show that included the traditional trappings of a Filipino disco from a bygone era. While Fatboy Slim tracks pump out of the speakers, and the multi-colored lights dance around the room, projections help set the tone for the journey the audience is about to take. “From the outset, this has to be a credible nightclub so we had to really get it right,” Nigrini says. “We have to prepare the audience for what is going to follow, so the pre-show was teched just like everything else.”
Nigrini uses a number of Panasonic projectors throughout the show, and he notes that he actually has quite a bit of gear. Aside from six Panasonic PT-D5700U and two PT-DW8300 projectors, he has six NEC M300WS short throw projectors that allow him to do things in that tiny room, along with 32 Panasonic slide panel LCD monitors of various sizes. “A lot of the design was governed by a ‘more is more’ approach,” he says. “Whatever could get us the maximum amount of surface area covered was the way to go. I wanted to cover every square foot of real estate that I could.” Sound Associates supplied the projection package.
With his projections an essential part of the storytelling, Nigrini says, “I enjoy being integral in that way. You can’t separate it from the other components.” The designer adds that his work on Here Lies Love has been compared to Fela!, another show where the projections were integral to the story. “That was another collection of pop songs and a challenging piece of history we had to recount. So we relied on what projections could do and were fleet-footed with a complicated topic. How do you give an audience a Filipino history lesson and still have a good time and not make it leaden and heavy and ponderous?”
Ultimately Here Lies Love is not simply an hour and a half in the theatre; it is a 360º immersion in the life and times of one of the most unforgettable political characters in history. Toward the end of the show, Imelda implores the audience—who now represent her people—with a simple question: “Why don’t you love me?” While it’s hard to love a backstabbing, double-dealing, greedy narcissist like Imelda, you may ask yourself, in a show that moves you so much—literally, if you’re watching from the dance floor and get caught up in the multiple audience migrations—what’s not to love?
Mark A. Newman is the former managing editor of Live Design, and some of his best friends are Filipino.