"Mystère, which opened in December of 1993, may have been Cirque’s first permanent show in Las Vegas, although not the first Cirque show," explains lighting designer Luc Lafortune, who recently re-lit the show. “That was Nouvelle Experience. It played for about 12 months or so, out at the Mirage which was then owned by Steve Wynn. I guess it was both Wynn and Cirque’s way of testing the market. The Big Top was out in the Mirage’s backlot. You couldn’t even see it from the strip, “ the LD adds. “The Dunes, The Sands, The Stardust, all of the old casinos were still around back then. The Mirage had opened just a few years back, and Treasure Island was little more than a whole in the ground.”
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As Lafortune notes, "Mystère was not only Cirque’s first permanent show but also, for a lot of us, including Franco Dragone, it was our first show in a theatre of this magnitude. I had never lit a show in a theatre before, let alone one as unique. The theatre, not unlike the show, was custom built, to our specifications; lifts, rigging, thrust, catwalks, seats, carpeting, all of it. Back then, we even had a light bridge, just upstage of the proscenium, but that’s long gone," he points out. "The stage is a mélange of both proscenium and thrust. The thrust was an homage to the Big Top. We also had lifts, four of them, including the entire thrust."
"I don’t quite remember exactly, but I think that rehearsals lasted about two and a half months. Actually, it wasn’t rehearsals. It was “Creation." Until then, we knew very little about the show. The scenery was for the most part complete, and we knew what the acts were going to be but that was about it. Costumes hadn’t been designed, music hadn’t been written, same thing for choreography, scenic moves hadn’t been plotted, and no one knew in what order the acts would proceed. We knew none of that, nor did we know how the show was going to open or what the Finale might look like," says Lafortune. "It had always been like that at Cirque, particularly with Franco. It offered us great latitude but by the same token, it could be exceedingly unsettling. And still, despite all of this, I was expected to produce a light plot, which I did, although I kept it to a minimum…. I’d be curious to know how many of those initial fixtures made it past the 30 year mark. My guess, not many. Mind you, the show changed so much over the years, new acts, new clowns, new music and on and on."
"Not only did I provide a light plot but I also had to decide what kind of equipment we were going to buy, fixtures, movers, scrollers, which ones and how many. I had never done that before and the task was I thought daunting. I was given a budget, something in the vicinity of a million dollars, and that was it. That was a lot of money back then. Still is," says Lafortune.
"Of course, at first glance, the notion of picking and choosing whatever you wanted may have seemed luxurious but there was a lot about the show that I still didn’t know. And yet, mostly for logistical reasons, the selection of equipment couldn’t wait. Franco Dragone’s refusal to abide by a script meant that the best I could do was to make an educated guess, Lafortune adds.
"One of the great advantages of working with Franco Dragone was that he never told me what to do. Most of what I got from him was either “yes,” or “I don’t like it. Find something else.” Guy Laliberté was very much the same. They never told us what to do but we had to be original. Typically, in the afternoon, rather than rehearse, we’d stage or as Franco put it, “Shake the stage”. Full crew. And in the evening, when everyone had gone home, I’d stay and we’d hang lights and try and come up with something. Again, a lot of latitude, tons of it but the process was exhausting, for everyone," comments the LD. "The crew however was exceedingly patient. A lot of them came from The Golden Nugget and they were use to doing one-nighters where there’s a constant need to adapt. Those however who were academically trained found it a bit more challenging."
“Over time, it became a lot easier and I looked forward to that time alone in the theatre. I’d play whatever music I liked, until all hours, and just create. But that wouldn’t happen for a few more years. Mystère was early in my career and I hadn’t done that many shows really. So for the most part, I was still winging it, designing it seems out of desperation more than anything else.”
"ScenoPlus I think was the original consultant. I remember I kept on asking for tons on lighting positions, not even knowing whether I was actually going to be hanging a fixture there. I think it was mostly insecurity. Then again, ScenoPlus weren’t accustomed to lighting circus acts. I was. The original design didn’t even have box booms, or a rail cove. We had to fight for those," explains Lafortune. "Scenic designer Michel Crete was a purist and the idea of a box boom didn’t really appeal to him. Most of us didn’t even know what a box boom was. That was all Jeanette Farmer. I couldn’t have done it without her. The two of us were like a bull in a china shop. We were never careless, however we were relentless".
"Mystere was unique in that, for the first time, I had access to a lot of technology; approximately two hundred color scrollers, panis, media scrollers, gobo rotators and what then seemed like a barrage of moving lights, all in, over a thousand individual devices. Of course, the necessity to cultivate this new technology meant that I had to work in ways I wasn’t use to. Franco was the kind of director who, had he known that a scroller could rip through all thirty-two frames in two seconds flat, he’d want that in the show, which was not exactly what I had in mind. So I had to be cautious. I didn’t want Franco to know more than he needed to. I showed only the things I wanted to show, and had given the crew strict instructions to do exactly as I asked, nothing more, nothing less. Of course, that didn’t last," notes Lafortune.
"One of the things Franco did a lot back then was to use the sound of loud thunder to mark a transition or a turning point. I hadn’t fully anticipated the extent to which we’d be doing it though. Still, I needed to come up with a lightning effect of some sort. Of course I could have done that with a whole lot of moving lights and a bit of flashing and trashing but I thought it might look awkward, and for the most part, it did. The aperture on the movers was a bit too narrow, and I wasn’t interested in imitations. I wanted something more evocative.
"Early on in the process, when I was identifying fixtures, I had specified about a dozen or so 3 cell Far Cyc units. By then however, the Far Cycs, which I had deemed useless, had been flown all the way out, up against the lower grid, and I had forgotten about them. They had already been individually circuited. So I laid them out on the console, on three separate channels and triggered them manually, on and off. It worked perfectly, and it still does. The light filed the room, illuminating the back walls of the theatre, which for the most part I was trying to hide. The faint light form the Far Cycs revealed rigging points and air ducts, hidden scenic devices and speakers, but we never saw the fixtures.
I liked how the light permeated the entire theatre. I had always been fond of lightning storms, particularly at night. Despite Mystere’s extended run, and the advent of newer technology with it’s ever so intricate cueing, I’ve always insisted that the cue be done manually. It needed that degree of sensitivity, and dexterity, something technology doesn’t always provide. To a large extent, Mystere was an exercise in unpredictability," the LD points out.
Not too long ago, someone asked Lafortune what was his motivation for lighting Mystère: Where did the ideas come from and what was it that inspired you? “I think it may have been apprehension. I was just trying to make it thru the day, from one day to the next. When I designed Mystère, it was mostly by the skin of my teeth, and yet I think that sense of urgency somehow found it’s way to the stage. The lighting is vibrant, somewhat tense, at other times poetic, perhaps even surreal, almost reckless, whether it be the colors or the moving light effects," he concludes.
Gear List:
180 ETC Fresnel V
153 ETC Spot V
43 Chauvet ColoRado 1 Solo
80 Chauvet ColoRado 2 Solo
24 Chauvet ColoRado 3 Solo
27 Robe Esprite
53 Robe Forte
2 MA Lighting grandMA 3 CRV consoles
3 MA Lighting grandMA3 NPU’s
1 MA Lighting grandMA2 on PC for relay control
10 Original ETC Sensor racks upgraded to Sensor 3 & 400 R20 relays
All new fiber network infrastructure with three new network racks and network ports and DMX output boxes in all new locations
ETC smart panel relay breaker panel
ETC Paradigm control for house lights and facility work lights
4 Robert Juliat OZ LED follow spots and 2 Alice models