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Chauvet fixtures chosen for Canadian “Hair” production

Lighting designer Julie Basse and her colleagues, including director Serge Denoncourt, just concluded a two-month run of the musical “Hair” in Montreal and Quebec, Canada. The set allowed them to hide ninety Chauvet Professional moving fixtures in their LSM-Ambiocreateur supplied rig.

At the center of this set were several high scaffolding towers imagined by set designer Guillaume Lord. Contributing to the authenticity of the scene, the rig’s 17 Maverick Force 3 Profile and 29 Maverick Force 1 Spot fixtures were hidden by borders in the overhead truss.

“The scaffolding towers looked as if the venue had been in construction for months and have been squatted by a group of hippies in 1968”, says Basse. “As the show takes place in 1968, from a realistic point of view, we were not supposed to have moving lights, so we decided to hide them. For this reason, my overhead truss trim was quite high (28’).” Moving fixtures that were not hidden high up in the truss scaffolding were kept from view in other ways. For example, Basse placed her 42 Rogue Outcast BeamWashes on boom truss far behind the set.

Basse did keep one type of fixtures visible in the set’s scaffolding: her 42 Colorado PXL Bar 16s, using them to be evocative of the old school ramp lamps that were available during the play’s era. She also positioned her 30 Ovation E-260CW ellipsoidals at a very low trim on each side of the proscenium to light the actors, so audiences could see their faces “without smashing the whole image”.

There was only a single Color Strike M in Basse’s rig, but it helped her create a memorable effect. She used it to backlight Claude, the musical’s main character, during his first and last appearance on the second level of the central scaffolding tower. Describing the effect, she notes: “It backlit him perfectly in the smoke for those two quick and surprising moments.”

Basse worked closely with her programmer Julien Blais-Savoie during this production. “I liked the apparent simplicity of having domestical fluorescent and quartz in the stage, but in good quantities”, she says. “It helped add realism to the set, giving it an 3D aspect. Moreover, we were able to program many punches for the songs, which smoothly brought the audience in a real music hall.”

“I’ve been working with the director Serge Denoncourt on several other musical and theatral productions, such as ‘Mademoiselle Julie’, ‘Je vais t’aimer’ and ‘Annie’”, concludes Basse. “We both love slick, white, and sophisticated lighting looks, but on this production the challenge for both of us was to go where nobody, including us, expected us to go - back to typical 1968 Broadway looks.”

(Photos: Maxim Paré Fortin)

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