Day ten of Live Design's '12 Plots Of Christmas' focuses on the lighting for the holiday classic, The Nutcracker, in a festive, well-loved version by David Wilcox at Long Beach Ballet, with a full symphony orchestra to bring the delightful Tchaikovsky score to life. Lighting design by Jared A. Sayeg, with scenic design by former Disney designers Elliot Hessayon and Scott Schaffer, costumes by Australian artist Adrian Clark, and special effects by magician Franz Harary.
"I was brought on board to bring a new design to Long Beach Ballet’s annual and epic production of The Nutcracker in 2015. It is a large production for a story ballet and its home venue, The Terrace Theatre, is a very wide and deep house playing to over 3,000. Working with artistic director David Wilcox — this production has a cast over one hundred dancers, a lot of scenery, Flying by Foy, a sixty-piece orchestra, pyro, and even a live white horse — the lighting needed to be aligned with the energy of all the spectacle in the production and yet also restrained and focused, particularly during the corps de ballet. With a white Marley dance floor, our color palette is very wide-ranged, as it begins with a cold snowy crossover before we arrive in the warm, Victorian party scene and then segue into a dream state as the room grows and battle scene unfolds. In the second act, everything becomes much softer, more lavender," explains Sayeg.
Laying out the light plot:
"The production has a lot of large rolling scenery that moves in and out of the wings and stores offstage, this created a big challenge in being able to have sidelight towers in all our wings for a stage that is 52’ deep and 66’ wide. My team and I came up with the solution of dissecting the sidelight towers in half, building smaller 8’ roving booms that could move in and out of position to allow for scenery access; above that would be custom U-Torm Ladders with the remaining bulk of fixtures that would hang from a truss on motors. Each side moves independently and has several moves during the performance to clear scenery, then fly in and return to its trim. Our deck electrics team and our programmer have inhibitors for every position and is called out before it flies or is moved out of position. There is as much offstage choreography for the lighting positions as there is onstage choreography in our production. The sidelight, like in any ballet – is the workhorse lighting position, a mixture of ETC Lustr II’s and conventional ETC Source-Fours make up the majority of our rig," says Sayeg.
"With the amount of scenery, drops and Flying by Foy Rigs taking up a lot of fly space, only a few overhead electrics were possible to squeeze in. Vari*Lite has been the automated fixture for the production outfitted entirely with VL-3500Q for the brightness, shutters, gobos and noise reduction. These fixtures handle all the specials, system washes and scenery toners and some special effects. I also made up-light positions from the front of the orchestra pit to cast shadow and duplicate the image of the soldiers as well as treat our backdrops in wildfire paint for a supernatural glow using the very powerful Wildfire VioStorm-120’s," the LD adds.
"This year we did a major overhaul on the Christmas Tree drop, removing all the wiring and existing fixtures, and replacing it with City Theatrical’s Candle Lite Flicker Candles. They look fantastic, even from the back row of the third balcony. Chris Osborne, my production electrician and programmer, engineered the candles so the actor “lighting” the tree would trigger each candle through a system he engineered of magnetics and sensors sending a signal directly to the console," Sayeg explains.
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"Many thanks PRG and my team for all the many years of support on this production and to the crew at the Terrace Theatre in Long Beach who make this possible every year," the LD concludes.
THE NUTCRACKER
Long Beach Ballet, Terrace Theatre, Long Beach CA
Lighting Gear :
Package supplied by: PRG
Conventionals:
20 ETC Source Four-10 750w
42 ETC Source Four-14 750w
37 ETC Source Four-19 750w
68 ETC Source Four-26 750w
56 ETC Source Four-36 750w
1 ETC Source Four-50 750w
8 ETC Source Four-70 750w
30 ETC Source Four PAR MFL 750w
8 ETC Source Four PAR NSP 750w
16 ETC Source Four PAR VNSP 750w
6 ETC Source Four PARNel 750w
1 PAR 64 WFL 1kW
2 Far Cyc 1 Cell 1kW
LED:
12 ETC Source Four-19 LED Lustr2
24 ETC Source Four-26 LED Lustr2
10 ETC Source Four-36 LED Lustr2
4 ETC Source Four-50 LED Lustr2
43 StageBlaster LED PAR 25w
21 Color Kinetics ColorBlaze 72 RGBW 420w
6 Wildfire VioStorm-120 175w
Automated Lighting
40 Vari-Lite VL3500Q Spot 1.2kW
Misc:
20 City Theatrical Candle Lite Flicker Candles
Followspots
2 Strong Gladiator Followspots 2.5kW
Atmospherics
2 Look Solutions Unique Hazer
4 Dry Ice 50 Gallon Drum
Dimming:
2 ETC Sensor Touring Racks 96x2.4kw
Control:
1 ETC Apex 10
1 ETC RPU
2 ETC RVI's
Lighting Team
- Lighting Design by: Jared A. Sayeg
- Production Electrician / Programmer: Chris Osborne
- Assistant Lighting Designers: Hilda Kane, Martha Carter, Winston Limauge
- Head Electrician: Mike Colleary
- Asst Electrician/Deck LX: Daniel Moorefield
- Lead Spot Operator: Carson Weed