The Lighting Design Of Balls' World Premiere

Balls, a co-production between Stages Repertory Theatre and One Year Lease Theater Company, recreates the 1973 "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match between women’s tennis star and ultimate winner Billie Jean King and 55-year-old former Wimbledon champion Bobby Riggs. Co-written by Tony Award nominee Bryony Lavery and Stage Edinburgh Award winner Kevin Armento, and co-directed by One Year Lease’s co-artistic directors Ianthe Demos and Nick Flint, Balls launched its world premiere for the month of October at Stages in Houston, Texas, with sets by Kristen Robinson, lighting by Mike Riggs, sound design by Brendan Aanes, and costumes by Kenisha Kelly. From January 16 to February 25, the play will move to 59E59 Theatre in New York for a six-week Off-Broadway run.

Unlike the forthright sound design, featured here, the lighting was quite subtle. “The tennis court is kept bright and basic,” explains Riggs, resident lighting designer for One Year Lease. “We’re not meant to notice the lighting design.” However, when the scenes depart from reality, the lighting became more theatrical, much like the musical sound cues. Live color changes in the four ETC Source Four LED Series 2 Lustr ellipsoidals—two controlled by followspot operators and two accompanied by a DMX Iris and a Rosco I-Cue Intelligent Mirror—helped transition from reality to fantasy. 

Throughout the production, Riggs maintained a 1970s look. “Sometimes that means bold color choices,” he says, “but today’s technology is capable of producing colors that you simply wouldn’t have seen on a stage in those days, so I tried to keep that in check.”  With a few exceptions, the color palette was very close to white. “I used a lot of [Rosco] R06 to give my incandescent sources that warm, slightly imperfect 1970s tone,” Riggs adds.

From the earliest stages of the production, Robinson’s set design concepts included some form of lighting as scenery. The final selection featured 25 Altman Lighting scoops rigged at an angle on a steel grid on the upstage wall to represent Houston Astrodome’s stadium lights. Each scoop housed the conventional lamp as well as a custom frame with a circle of RGB LED tape that activated the interior of the scoop. While it was the backdrop in Houston, the grid will be an overhead element in New York.

The overhead lighting included approximately 75 conventional fixtures, including ETC Source Four ellipsoidals in varying degrees, Altman Lighting 6x9 ellipsoidals and 65Q 6'' Fresnels, Philips Strand Leko Lites, and PAR 64s. Fourteen K9 Lights Bulldogs RGB LED Pars washed the stage with color, and Altman Lighting R40 Strip 288W lights were used as audience blinders around the perimeter of the stage. Pin spots illuminated three mirror balls.

Riggs programmed the lighting on an ETC Ion console with help from head electrician Mitchell Cronin Barhorst, who did the show control programming for the architecture that Aanes conceived. The lighting was powered by Stages’ in-house ETC Sensor Dimming rack with 72 dimmers, an auxiliary Strand CD80 with 12 dimmers, two six-channel 1,800W Leprecon dimmer packs, six four-channel 300W dimmer packs, and eight 240 channel low voltage decoders. “We ran out of power in the building,” Burkholder states.

Check out the lighting gear list below, and stay tuned for more on the staging of Balls.

 

Ellipsoidals and LEDs

2 ETC Source Four LED Series 2 Lustr 26°

2 ETC Source Four LED Series 2 Lustr 19°

1 ETC Source Four 90° Ellipsoidal

3 ETC Source Four 50° Ellipsoidal

17 ETC Source Four 36° Ellipsoidal

10 ETC Source Four jr Zoom

Philips Selecon 90°

14 Altman Lighting 6x9 Ellipsoidal

4 Philips Strand Leko Lite 6x9

1 Philips Strand Leko Lite 6x9 750W

4 Philips Strand 30°

2 Philips Strand 4.5 x 6.5

PARs

16 PAR 64 WFL

2 ETC Source Four PAR MFL

2 PAR 64 MFL

Fresnels

37 Altman Lighting 65Q 6'' Fresnel

24 Altman Lighting 14'' Scoop 300W

Striplights

6 Altman Lighting R40 Strip 288W

Blacklights

Stage Ape UV Black Light

Wildfire 400W Black Light

Mirror Balls

13 Pin Spot 90W       

1 Mirror Ball 24''

2 Mirror Ball 18''

2 Solenoid

Moving Lights

2 Martin by Harman Atomic 3000

2 Rosco iCue Intelligent Mirror

2 Rosco DMX Iris

Bulldogs

12 K9 Lights K-9 Bulldog PAR 25°

2 K9 Lights K-9 Bulldog PAR 45°

LED Tape

23 6 x LED Bars RGB 12V 6W Scoop frame

2 LED Tape RGBA 12V Scoop grid

26 72 x LED Bars RGB 12V 70W

Practicals

365 Satco S4570 6W Scoreboard Digit Lamp

1 Hanging tennis ball

Dimmers & Decoders

6 Elation Professional 4x400W Dimmer                        

City Theatrical B4 Dimmer

6 Amazon 24-channel DMX Decoder

DC Power Supplies

5 24V Robotjoy S480 Power Supply

1 12V Large Power Supply (Existing)

1 12V Power Supply TBD

1 12V Small Power Supply (Existing)