It took 12 years, but it seemed inevitable that a film grossing more than $131 million worldwide would become source material for a Broadway musical. Such is the case for School Of Rock, the popular 2003 movie directed by Richard Linklater, in which Dewey Finn, a slacker musician played by Jack Black, impersonates a friend by taking a substitute teaching job and then creates a rock band with the fifth-grade students. The eponymous Broadway version opened in December 2015 at the 1,500-seat Winter Garden Theatre, where it has been doing very well at the box office, with a score by Andrew Lloyd Webber, book by Julian Fellowes (writer of Downton Abbey), and directed by Laurence Connor. The design team comprises Anna Louizos, sets and costumes; Natasha Katz, lighting; and Mick Potter, sound. Read about the set and costume design as well as the sound design.
In keeping with the show’s prep school setting and other realistic locations that eventually morph into a rock concert, Katz designed the lighting as a triple play. The first mode is naturalistic, following the comedy aspects of the musical, with warm colors such as dark amber in the light.
The second look is inside the schoolroom, where Dewey teaches rock music. “There is a fine line for the lighting in the classroom,” says Katz, who had seen the film version several times with her own children and found the project very exciting. “I usually light a musical hand-in-glove with the music, but in this case, it had the potential to look like a rock concert in the classroom. I didn’t want to foreshadow the actual rock concert that takes place at the end of the show or to feel as if we weren’t in the world of the classroom. It took restraint not to, as it’s hard not to do what’s in my DNA.”
As a result, the designer found herself listening to an inner dialogue and asking herself, “Should I or shouldn’t I?” In the end, she found a compromise, a hybrid. “Lighting in a musical helps the emotional dynamic and changes the mood,” says Katz, who added deep purple, blues, and medium reds as under-painting for the rock moments in the classroom.
The third mode of illumination is for the concert scene, where the colors refer back to those used in the schoolroom under-painting. “The story is the arc of these kids learning to play and their freedom at the end,” says Katz, who has Clay Paky Sharpys, Harman Martin Professional MAC Auras and Atomic Strobes, Philips Color Kinetics ColorBlasts, and nine-light Molefays on the rock stage, where the truss is lit with one-foot lengths of linear RGBW LEDs placed one foot apart. “The concert scene is cued very tight musically and constantly changing,” adds Katz. “I didn’t want to repeat myself but wanted to give each kid a signature look. The lighting is very vibrant and active, with your eye following the very thin beams of the Sharpys, almost like a pointer.” Craig Stelzenmuller is the production’s associate lighting designer, and Alex Fogel programmed the moving lights.
Three Modes Of Illumination
Production electrician Michael Pitzer notes that the lighting system runs on a fully redundant fiber optic network and PRG Series 400 Power and Data Distribution, as well as wireless DMX from RC4 Wireless. “We use wireless DMX in the deck units, scenic sliders, and props so that we don’t have to trail a cable or where we have power but no option to run a DMX cable,” he explains. For example, there are wireless receivers for the two bedroom wagons that have LED light boxes and LED Christmas lights. The hallway sliders use a battery and wireless DMX receiver to control LED birdies. The brick sliders left and right receive power through a bus bar on the traveler track but use a wireless DMX receiver to control the LED light boxes. All of the LED light boxes in the show use 16-bit four-channel LED drivers. “As for the wireless props,” adds Pitzer, “the guitar case and jukebox have wireless receivers for the LED tape. The skull phone uses a two-chain wireless dimmer to control the eyes that flash when the phone rings.”
Pitzer notes that the Palace Stage platform, the concert stage that tracks downstage and spins 720°, is his biggest challenge on the show. “To power the Atomic Strobes, Sharpys, MAC Auras, ACLs, ColorBlasts, Star Strobes, and RGB LED ‘neon,’ we need 200 amps of power and three universes of DMX,” he explains. “Automation needs power and data for the onboard motor. Sound needs power and several Ethernet lines of all of the instruments and monitors. All of the power and data distribution has to fit under the drum riser, which is only 6'x6'x3' tall.”
His first challenge was the 200 amps of power. “We use 50 smaller conductors to carry the 200 amp three-phase power through an Igus cable chain in the SR deck track,” he says. “The output connectors on the doghouse are five-wire cam locks. This goes to the 200 amp, five-wire commutator under the center of the drum platform.” The lighting is broken out into a 24x2.4kW dimmer rack mounted sideways, two 3x208V PDs for the strobes, and 6x120V PDs for everything else.
For data, the Palace Stage uses 10 Ethernet cables: two for lighting (main and spare), two for automation (main and spare), and the rest for audio. For lighting control, the Ethernet breaks out to four universes of DMX with a DMX node. “To complicate it even more,” adds Pitzer, “all of the lighting had to be installed onsite once the stage and truss were assembled, so this meant that all of the lighting was hung and wired in the dark in the upstage storage position during rehearsals. Thanks to my amazing crew: Jeremy Wahlers, Karen Zitnick, Matt Carney, Meredith Kievit, and David Spirakes!”
Check out the set and costume design as well as the sound design.
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