Peter Pan
Montreal-based Luz Studio, headed by Matthieu Larivée, was asked by producers Entourage to create a visual design for their staging of Peter Pan the Musical at the city’s Espace St-Denis theatre. It was the first time that this famous fairytale musical had been presented there and in Quebec, and the challenge was to ensure that all the adventure and charm of the original story were replicated in a more contemporary setting.
Matt and his team set out to highlight the magic and drama of the story – which traditionally includes people flying – with lighting, video and scenic elements, ensuring a memorable experience for audiences of all ages. When it came to choosing the lighting, Robe was picked as the main brand to help bring Peter Pan’s dreams and energy to life, with Matt including 28 x FORTES, 42 x Tetra2s and 8 x LEDBeam 150s on the design, supplied to the St-Denis production by SoftBox Integration.
Luz Studio also created all video content. Set, video and location of the different video surfaces, together with the flying rigging for performers, were all major starting points for lighting.
It was important to keep the flying tracks as concealed as possible. Then with an LED pros arch and an LED screen upstage plus projection onto a downstage scrim and the scenic rim of the pros arch, it was vital that all the lighting could be tightly controlled and accurately focussed and shuttered.
They needed highly flexible and multifunctional luminaires that also had plenty of effects and scope for refinement.
Another major consideration was that the projections – beamed from two 40K machines positioned at FOH – were used to texture many of the set pieces onstage so it was really essential that light could be precisely targeted.
With the front and rear LED screens positioned around 35 metres apart, all the lighting elements needed to be rigged into a tight semicircular wrap-around space above the stage.
Robe is a regular go-to moving light choice for Matt for specific shows and applications, and the FORTE / iFORTE series is his current favourite for key lighting and producing excellent skin tones.
On this production, the FORTES were rigged on side torms left and right of the stage and on the FOH positions.
6 x FORTES were running on RoboSpot controllers – Matt will often lean into the adaptability of the RoboSpot system, which allows fixtures to be seamlessly swapped between follow spotting duties and being used as part of the general rig.
The LEDBeam 150 is another fixture Matt appreciates greatly for different reasons, including its small size and relative power, which make it a reliable and handy little asset.
For Peter Pan, LEDBeam 150s were rigged on the downstage most torms and placed around the front of the stage to assist with lighting faces. The output is subtle and gentle enough to be a great foreground light for illuminating the dancers. “They produced a nice layer of focused light from these positions,” Matt noted.
LEDBeam 150s were also great for highlighting props. “They can be super directional even without snoots, so specific objects can be picked out and it’s possible to get great effects without washing out everything else,” he confirmed.
While there were only 8 x LEDBeam 150 fixtures in this show, they played a prominent and vital role.
Matt commented that working on lighting, video and set as one visual entity enabled them to optimise the synchronisation of these different components beautifully and dramatically, combining art and technology thoughtfully and intelligently to get vivid and consistent results. These assisted the narrative and reinforced the intrigue and enchantment of this timeless story of the boy who never grew up.
Robe’s Tetra2 moving LED battens were used as a main wash light for this show, to bathe the stage in colour and help merge set, lighting and video into a harmonious, relatable visual environment.
The Tetra2s also proved ideal – with intricate programming and effects like the flower – for adding layers of shimmering and twinkling trickery during the flying scenes.
The team had some fun lighting these and the fairy character Tinkerbell, represented by a pulsing LED light in this production. Everyone’s favourite baddie Captain Hook and his boat also offered plenty of scope for imagination and some great lighting treatments.
Matt enjoys working collaboratively with his team at Luz Studio, and this is an essential part of their MO and their success:
“I have an overall perspective and will take the first brief and set the tone for a project like this, then leave it to the team of lighting and video designers and programmers to develop the piece – it’s important to give them room to create.”
His talented colleagues on this project included lighting programmers Charles Morin and Pierre-Luc Bédard; video designers Sébastien Deschênes and Laurence Payette, and video programmer Philippe Marquis. Charles Morin was also responsible for the pre-viz.
Their video content also included a lot of virtual lighting, which had to mix and match with the real lumens onstage – another advantage of producing all the visual parts together.
PHOTOS: Snapephoto
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