Based on the popularity of Live Design's 31 Days Of Plots in December each year, we have decided to present Plot Of The Week, with a light plot (or plots) per week until December 2023, when the next 31 Days Of Plots begins.
This week's plots are for Zephyr, a traveling circus created by the Las Vegas-based Cirque Mechanics and recently performed at The New Victory Theatre in New York City. With scenic design by the company founder Chris Lashua, lighting for Zephyr is by Joe D'Emilio and Leo Hidalgo, who share their plots and their thoughts about the lighting with Live Design...
Live Design: Do you tour with your rig or use the in-house gear at various venues?
Leo Hidalgo: In this production of Zephyr we don’t tour with our own rig, but we do travel with a few items that are used within the show—we have a Birdie (Par 16) that lives downstage center; it gets used a few times throughout the show to create some lovely shadows.
On our touring show we also have four strips of RGB pixel tape within the finale apparatus, but is not in use for this production. It’s a wireless setup using City Theatrical ShowBabys for data and OCTO MK2 from Enttec for control.
What we do rely on the most while traveling is our extensive plot, gobos, and design skills. We work closely with each venue to transfer in the show to fit within their inventories and architectural challenges. Often, venues will supplement their inventory with a few rentals, and in those moments we may ask to rent moving lights or LEDs to speed up the load-in.
We tour with our own light board, an ETC Ion XE20 running EOS 3.1+ we do utilize the Augment3D feature quite a bit while on the road.
Joe D'Emilio: This is the fourth Cirque Mechanics show I have toured with, and it has always been the standard that we do not tour with a lighting rig. This is both to keep our overhead costs down and also to streamline the load-in and tech process at each venue. The downside is that it requires an extensive tech advance process, sometimes with several revisions to the venue-specific plot based on lighting positions, fixture availability, and budget. We have been to venues where we send our initial drawings and all they have an extensive house plot with everything we need, and other spaces where we have to make drastic adjustments (like no box booms, or only 12 fixtures FOH which can’t be refocused, or event the plot hung completely backwards, etc). We have to be prepared for anything.
The majority of the dates we play are same-day load-in/show/load-out schedules, so it is imperative to the success of the performance that everything is ready for us when we arrive. For the LD, that arrival time is usually 6 or 7 in the morning, and we typically have about 2hrs before our set loads in to focus the majority of our close to 200-fixture conventional plot. We prioritize the overstage fixtures first and with a good crew can get through all overhead electrics in that time except for a few specials, all with just a handful of marks that we tape out on the deck.
LD: There are two LD's - how do you collaborate?
LH: Joe and I met during my freshman year of college, when he returned as a guest LD for a showcase (he had graduated the year prior). Quickly we developed a good friendship and mentorship that continues to this day.
On this production, Joe pushed for me to take on more design responsibilities. I worked with our stage manager, who filmed every rehearsal during the creation process, which allowed me to start gathering design research and start to build the plot. Joe and I would have weekly phone calls to hone in those ideas. During the tech process, Joe worked with our director to build out the structure of the design, and I finished out the design. The bulk of the design was built by the two of us, but you’ll find some cues skew more towards Joe’s eye while others towards mine. We only had one moment where we both wanted to design the same act.
JD: Leo pretty much said it all, I saw the potential for us to collaborate early on in our friendship and since we had the same mentor in college we have similar approaches to the design process. I was thrilled to bring him on as a second lighting director for our previous tour of Birdhouse Factory in 2021-22, and when we found out Zephyr would be opening as our new show last fall I thought it would be a great opportunity to work together.
Unlike a sit-down show, the design on tour is constantly evolving, since we never truly get enough time to fully flesh out the show before it hits the road. Leo has been the LD on the road since Zephyr launched in October of 2022, and though I was part of the initial design, I had not had a chance to see it until we tech'ed the show in NYC. Since we are sitting down here for several weeks (a luxury for us!), Leo was able to catch me up on ways the show has improved artistically and also how some of the acts have evolved. We then were able to revisit many of the sequences and also work in extra design elements we don’t usually get to use on tour since we had additional tech time.
LD: What are the challenges of lighting for acrobats—can you give some specifics for Zephyr?
LH: Height is one of the biggest challenges. When you’re building a multidimensional show, often only with conventional fixtures, your plots quickly become massive with multiple lights having to cover one system- for example our boom systems are our most important systems of light in this show, and it’s often the most time consuming to build and focus. It’s a simple three-color system: shins, mids, heads, but each system needs two lights, one as a standard focus, and the other as an aerial focus. When it comes to aerial specials, that’s an even greater challenge: with our hair hang act, our performer is physically attached to the structure so one would expect the routine to be consistent, but there’s so much more to take into account with physics and how subtle variations in the blocking on deck can cause changes significant enough in the air for our specials to be out of focus.
In the Perch Pole act, our specials lighting the acrobat above are from the booms and focus about 16 feet in the air, but we also have to take into account that her base is a 6ft-tall man who’s trying to balance her on his head or shoulder and she needs to be visible from his angle. He moves in every direction, as does she. Our Umbrella stacking performer has three different positions on the ground, and each position has a different stacking configuration and height. Making sure that the umbrellas are consistently lit is one challenge, but the second is making sure we’re not blinding the person holding up four umbrellas with her feet!
Even with our juggler we need to be mindful of our aerial focus, the higher his hats or pins go, the more time it has to find a dark spot and for him to lose sight of it and miss the catch.
JD: Leo hit a key point about not blinding the performers, which can often present a struggle when trying to create a really beautiful or stylized look for the act. There are certain acts that require very specific lighting angles and intensities for the acrobats to perform safely, and sometimes that means thinking outside the box of which system to use to achieve the look we want. After working with circus performers for several years, I’ve learned which ideas work and which ones to stay away from. It’s also important to be able to communicate with the acrobats about what they need and let them know we’re on their side. We want the show to be beautiful, but we also want to give them an environment where they feel they can execute each trick safely and precisely.
LD: Use of color—how does it help tell the story?
LH: While looking at research I kept being drawn to surrealist artwork, mainly I was looking at how color was being used and the contrast between them. From there I was able to choose a palette for our show. In one of our phone calls, Joe and I discussed the color palette and shifted towards more saturated colors to where we are now. We also started to set different looks and tones for each character. For example: “Fuel," our salesman. has a deep amber and red as his primary colors—this is based off of the items he sells to the townsfolk.
“Nigel,” the windmill owner, has blue and light purple as his colors, since his storyline is wind driven, I wanted him to always feel like his mind was in the sky.
JD: I love designing for Circus performance because it is such a unique art form and allows designers to experiment with unconventional color combinations and stylistic looks even more than traditional style shows. As Leo mentioned, there’s a good amount of surrealistic influence to this show which comes through in our heavy use of texture and uncommon color combinations.
LD: How do you adapt to various size stages?
LH: This is one of the benefits of having a lighting designer on tour, and one that also helped create the show. Most often the transfers into different theaters is pretty straightforward, when we work with smaller venues and have inventory and architectural challenges is where our design hats need to come out. There are several ways of modifying the show and reducing our inventory count, most often that comes down to renting moving lights and LEDs.
JD: The biggest challenge is making a decision within the first 20 minutes of arriving at each theater on exact placement of the set, which obviously defines the focus of the whole plot. And this decision also involves Wes Hatfield, who is in charge of the scenic build and rigging, and also performs in the show. Most of the time we are able to arrive with an accurate plan, but even with extensive planning and communication with the venue TD, there is always the occasional surprise. And about 25% of the time on the road, the venues don’t have sufficient tech information at all. These surprises can include: depth of the apron or width of the proscenium, lighting positions we thought were usable but cannot be accessed or refocused, or rigged speakers or other architecture blocking important lighting angles —any or all of which can affect the position of the set upstage or downstage. An adjustment by only one-to-two feet in either direction can require units overhead to be moved between pipes, or re-positioning the booms which may have already been tied off or secured to the deck.
This of course adds extra time to our load-in and can drastically affect the rehearsal schedule for the acrobats, especially if we have a performance that evening. Much of touring requires making very quick and well informed decisions when it comes to making onsite changes, and making sure to distinguish between those that are essential for the performers safety and visibility, and those that are purely for aesthetic purposes.
New Victory Plots:
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Master plots:
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Zephyr: lighting gear list
Master show:
140 ETC Conventional Source Four
46 ETC Source Four PAR
1 MR16 Birdie
1 Simple Spin
1 Martin Atomic 3000 LED
2 Look Solutions Unique 2.1
6 Sky Cyc 3 Cell
6 Ground Cyc 3 Cell
New Victory show:
116 ETC Conventional Source Four
14 Source Four LED Series 2 Lustr
2 ETC Source Four PAR
14 ETC ColorSource PAR DB
12 ChromaQ Colorforce II 72 (6)
6 Sky Cyc 3 Cell
4 Martin Mac Aura (4)
5 ETC High End Lonestar
Touring console:
ETC ION XE20
Dell touchscreen monitor
See more Live Design 2023 Lighting Plots