2007 Aug 10 - Fri
The Sisterhood ("Les Femmes Savantes")
BMDS has a new production opening up on August 30, 2007. We have another imported
directory for this one, Suzann McLean. The
Sisterhood is a "farce about cultural elitism
and the triumph of true love over snobbery. One of Molière.s most popular comedies." The
play has been modernized and is set in a chic 1980's salon. I'm assisting Doug Parker on
this one. We had our first production meeting with the director earlier this month.
The set, for the internal areas, is blacks and whites. The outer courtyard will have
more color in it. As of tonight, set construction has proceeded to the point where most of
the basic wall structure is place. There is still
some question as to how high to make the walls, a standard 8 feet, or would a total of 10
feet be better? Producer Jo Shane is working her way through that question.
From a lighting perspective, after taking a quick glance through the script, I thought it
might be another simple lights-on/lights-off type of scenario. But after some clarification
from the director that the story takes place over the course of the day, we find we can have
some fun with light angles and colors to simulate a moving sun. In addition, the interior
set has a three or four primary areas: a bar area, patio doors, a couch area, and a hallway
with telephone. The director has called for subtle light changes to highlight the action
areas as they occur.
Earlier in the year, the Gilbert and Sullivan society donated a new light board and four
High End lights. We were able to use the lighting board for the Famous for 15 production.
As we were missing cables and connections for the lights, we couldn't use the new lights
then. They would have proven useful for the night club play.
I did order some DMX connectors from SIRS
Electronics in McAllen Texas. I ordered through their web page. The order was handled
quickly and was complete on arrival. The color lights have a controller box, and are
connected to it through four pin DMX connectors. The box is connected to the light board
with a five pin DMX connector. After some research on Beldin's website as to an appropriate
cable to use with the connectors, I found that standard Category 5 network cable would fit
the bill. There is ample supply of that type available to us.
After work this evening, Doug Parker and I met at the theatre to try out the colored
lights. Mary Brier stopped by for a bit to see how things were going. Doug did the plugs
for the light electricals, and I soldored some test signal cables
together so we could see how the things work. After
suffering through a mild blonde moment where we couldn't get the light to come on, we
realized the grandmaster wasn't up (ok, that did prove my soldoring job first time through
was
good). Whew, simple problem number 1 down. The second problem
took a bit longer to figure out. With no manuals to work from, we had to go by guess and by
golly. I imagine the light manufacturer had the same question often enough, such that they
printed the directions on the control box. It took a bit of fiddling, but we found an auto
mode in which the control box found its light. After that, it was smooth sailing. One
thing to remember is that the sliders on the light board are numbered starting from 1, and
DMX channels are numbered starting at 0, which I think is why when we progammed a DMX
offset of 73 into the controllor, we had slider 74 as the first active slider.
Saturday we go back in to make the remaining control cables and test out the three
remaining color lights.
As part of the order with SIRS, I obtained a copy of Light Factory. Light Factory has a
downloadable fixture library for the High End lights we have. Perhaps we can try out the
new lights as well as the new software for the upcoming production.
[/Personal/Lighting]
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