AJ Pen, president and principal designer at Penlight, has worked with Josh Groban, One Republic, and Linkin Park, among others, and is currently out on the road with My Chemical Romance. He took some time to share his thoughts on his production and lighting design for the MCR reunion tour, what he thinks is "the new king in its class" fixture, and the secret reveal during the encore break.
Live Design: What was your inspiration for the look of this tour?
AJ Pen: The look of the tour was inspired directly by the artist… twice! My Chemical Romance’s management sent me an image—a tableau from a dance piece in some small black box theatre—and I created a brief animation of a set piece with some lighting looks inspired by this image. We scheduled a meeting with Gerard Way, the band's singer and author of the Dark Horse Comics “Umbrella Academy” series. Gerard immediately saw potential in the kernel of the design and together we fleshed out a scene that depicted souls on earth climbing up to an angel that would hang above and behind the band.
Just as TAIT began to engineer the touring set pieces, we received word that there would be a new design direction and we needed to get cracking on something more… dystopian. The band's new song, “The Foundations Of Decay,” explores the state of the world today and the band would play in the wreckage of one possible future. We wanted to give real-world depth and dimension to the scene behind them. The printed backdrop depicted a city barely standing, and the different bombed-out buildings, vehicles and general rubble in the foreground would be a combination of tall staging flats and carved Styrofoam set pieces. TAIT took my renderings and engineered a touring set that is simply spectacular. For a change, the shop was not building frames for LED panels; the band did not feel that they wanted to play in front of video screens, and therefore the background would have to become kinetic with light and shadow. The result is a show that features something unique and evocative to look at, yet never dominates the energy of the live band. Their performance proves that you don’t need video content to keep an audience engaged!
LD: Can you describe the TAIT set piece? What challenges or opportunities did it present for your design?
AJP: The design of the set pieces began with a rolling slab on which I knew we would travel each of the buildings as a flat set piece, with more three dimensional “rubble” at the base of each wrecked structure. I used images from Shutterstock that I then doctored in Photoshop to include a transparency so that there would be physical openings through which light would shine. I proposed that the FR10 fixtures be mounted for travel on this rolling cart, and TAIT took the plan depicted in the renderings and ran with the engineering of a touring set. Structural decisions were all handled by TAIT, and the tallest building pieces would be picked up by inverted motors that would live in the Christie F-Type scenic trusses that we would hang each day.
LD: Are you using any new tech on this tour that you haven't worked with before?
AJP: We are featuring two new fixtures in this design: the relatively new GLP FR10 was introduced at the beginning of the pandemic and improves on their ubiquitous X4 Bar20 fixture by allowing individual zoom for each individual LED element in the meter-long tilting array of 10. The Martin Mac Ultra Performance, on the other hand, is the pinnacle of what a profile automated luminaire can be. In addition to ludicrous intensity on tap, an incredible zoom range and full complement of excellent gobos, animation and prism, the fixture allows for control of the individual segments of its white LED source via an internal effects engine or their P3 pixel-control protocol. The all-new and unique effects that can be rendered with this feature give an entirely new dimension both to beams in the air and of course to gobos projected on a surface. For me, it’s the new king in its class and warps our expectations of a flagship moving light.
LD: What are your regular workhorse fixtures/console?
Martin LED products are always my go-to fixtures. The Quantum Wash and Profile, Encore Profile, Aura XB and now the Mac Ultra Performance all render excellent color and produce a high-quality even field. And you can try to simulate a strobe with LED all day long, but the Atomic 3000 is, and will always be, the finest strobe in the business and I will keep using them until there are no more left on the planet!
LD: What challenges did you run into?
AJP: Although it would not be a problem in the arenas in North America, there were a few venues on the European tour that presented us with a low-trim situation where our scenic trusses would not be able to fly high enough to hang the complete structure of three of our bombed-out skyscrapers. These set pieces were constructed in thirds, where the top piece would be lifted out of its mooring on the set cart, then pick up the middle piece and finally come to rest on the bottom section which was permanently affixed to the set cart. The solution to low trim was elegant: just leave out the middle piece! On two of the buildings, the artwork was “wrecked” and random enough that you didn’t have to back up more than five or six meters before the illusion obscured the horizontal joint. One of the buildings needed a simple “band-aid” piece of art that mounted over the seam and made the building look continuous. Voilà: the look in a low-trim venue was not even slightly compromised!
LD: What is the highlight of this design for you?
It’s the secret piece we don’t reveal until the encore break: Leaning over in the midst of the rubble, a neon sign for a pest control business would mysteriously begin to work when the band leaves the stage for the customary breather.
Gear List
- 36 Martin Mac Ultra Performance
- 14 Martin Quantum Wash
- 20 Martin Aura XB
- 12 Martin Atomic 3000
- 8 Robe BMFL Followspot, 4 Control Stations
- 70 GLP Impression FR10 Bar
- 2 Colorforce II 72
- 4 Look Solutions Unique 2.1 Hazer
- 4 Look Solutions Viper 2.6 Fogger
- All Truss is Christie Lites F-Type
- 21 1 Ton Lighting Points
- 6 1/2 Ton Lighting Points
- 18 1/4 Ton Scenic Points pre-rigged in F-Type Truss
Crew List
- Kitty Hoffman: Crew Chief
- Patrick Brodnicki: Master Electrician
- Jeremy Van Delft: FOH, Robospot Technician
- Sam Hooper: Lighting Technician
- Evan Klemmt: Rigger
- Michael Cormier: Carpenter
Photo credit: Janine Van Oostrom