“Six,” Broadway’s new musical that opened October 3, already has a global following. From its beginnings at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, then to the bigger stages of London’s West End and Broadway, the modern retelling of the six wives of King Henry VIII is a historic pop spectacle. With a singing competition as the setting of the musical, the staging and lighting is different than anything currently on the Great White Way. PRG (Production Resource Group) is providing lighting and media servers for the show and worked closely with the show’s lighting designer, Tim Deiling, and associate lighting designers, Paul Toben and Tim Reed, to realize a creative vision that drew inspiration from pop diva concerts.
“Beyoncé’s narrative pop concerts, where she tells you parts of her story, is what inspired the authors of “Six,” said Deiling. “Each of our six Queens are actually influenced heavily from contemporary pop divas (Aragon = Beyoncé, Boleyn = Katy Perry, Seymour = Adele, Cleves = Rihanna, and Parr = Alicia Keys) and I needed to differentiate between each Queen, so we drew on reference material from each of them.”
PRG’s proprietary products – Longthrow™ Luminaire, Best Boy® HP and Mbox® media server - were used in innovative ways to provide more flexibility and control and to evoke a concert feel.
“We were excited to collaborate with Tim and team, retrofitting lighting fixtures specifically to meet their needs. PRG also developed custom features in Mbox that are integral to the set,” said Michael Dodge, National Department Head, Lighting and Infrastructure. “PRG provides the lighting for a lot of Broadway shows but on “Six” the scenic components are minimal, so the lighting does more of the heavy lifting to create the setting for the show, and it has to be just right.”
Creating a Concert Experience Through Lighting
In place of traditional followspots, PRG converted two Longthrow Luminaires with Followspot Controller™ Handles for manual control. The proprietary Longthrow is a high-output automated followspot that produces 200 foot-candles at a distance of 350 feet and allows all features to be controlled remotely from the lighting console. The addition of the Followspot Controller Handle allows the show’s lighting operator to take manual control over the fixture’s pan and tilt, intensity and zoom, while the lighting console maintains control of the other features such as color and gobo, allowing for perfect and consistent timing for the fast-moving show.
“The Longthrow fixtures with the Followspot Controller Handles are great and let us do lots of different color adjustments for different skin tones and color bumps,” said Deiling. “We control the intensity through the desk, too, which snaps the spot along with all the time-coded cues.”
Toben added, “Chris Conti [PRG’s Chief Innovation Officer] and Michael Dodge came to the theater to make modifications for our operators, which is great. From the design side, the Longthrows have really remarkable output with the right color. They are bright and people look beautiful in it. We plan to take them on the road as well.”
Typically, Longthrow Luminaires are used on concert tours for artists like Bon Jovi and U2, usually in a PRG GroundControl™ Followspot System. “Six,” however, is making lighting history as the first Broadway show to ever use Longthrows and the first show ever to employ Followspot Controller Handles.
To further help create the modern pop concert feel of the show, the design team employed PRG Best Boys as back light.
“We wanted a strong back followspot look which is iconic in pop concerts such as Beyoncé and Taylor Swift,” said Toben. “Not a lot of fixtures that are as bright and large can move as swiftly as a Best Boy. You can tell it uses a more premium motor than most automated fixtures.”
Finding Cost-Effective Ways to Creating Big Moments in the Show
“For the big German night club scene, we wanted to use blue and green lasers but that would have been really expensive and challenging because of state regulations. PRG introduced us to the ROBE Spikie® and we were able to put lots of them around the auditorium to create an intimate, immersive night club feel. With its narrow beam, the Spikie emulates a laser but at half the price,” said Deiling.
Innovative Use of Video Comes to the Royal Court
The set of “Six” is a gold bandstand with curved metal frames covered in LED pixel tape – taking on the form of a royal court. Before the show came to Broadway, the lighting and LED components were smaller so the set LED was controlled by the built-in pixel mapping functionality in the EOS lighting console. When the show moved to Broadway the LED increased to 46,442 pixels. There was some concern that controlling that many pixels on the lighting desk would slow down the system, and the show wanted to avoid the expense and complexity of adding second console and operator. Toben reached out to PRG for a possible solution and quickly recognized that the Mbox media server was the way to go.
“It was clear that Mbox was the right choice as it provides incredibly robust and powerful features. We have three Mboxes on the show and we push them to their limits but never have had a bottleneck, they perform flawlessly,” said Toben. “On the development side, there were a few features the EOS console had that were not in Mbox but Matt Corke, Mbox Product Manager at PRG, did an incredible job to create and implement those effects.”
PRG built generative effects in Mbox for the LED on the structural scenic pieces for “Six.” Using effects in place of custom video content not only streamlined the cueing and playback, but it will benefit future Mbox users, as these features are now standard in the software.
“Mbox is typically used for LED or projection, so using it to animate the set of “Six” is a novel deployment,” said Corke. “However, Mbox has one of the most well-developed pixel mapping mechanisms and it matches action on stage very well. The main lighting console is controlling Mbox, thus reducing people, gear and expense that might otherwise be required. At the same time, the power and flexibility of Mbox has allowed the lighting team to expand the scale of the show without compromising the design.”
Toben noted that, between the seamless integration of Mbox with the lighting desk and the addition of the generative effects created within the software, it’s clear that Mbox should be deployed across all companies of “Six” worldwide.
“We will be licensing Mbox for all shows moving forward. It will be so much easier not to have to reprogram; the control systems and the scenery will be the same,” said Toben. “I’ve been so happy with the support from PRG. It has been a great process.”