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Jaymi Lee Smith lights “One of the Good Ones” at Pasadena Playhouse with Proteus Odeon from Elation

For the March world premiere of “One of the Good Ones” at the Pasadena Playhouse in Southern California, lighting designer Jaymi Lee Smith turned to Elation’s Proteus Odeon LED profile fixture to fulfill a number of lighting roles. “One of the Good Ones”, a comedy from Gloria Calderón Kellett that explores racial and generational differences while laying bare some biases and preconceptions, ran from March 13 to April 7, 2024.

“The production is a realistic comedy”, confirms Smith. “The scenic designer, Tanya Orellana, created a modern house that reflected the rich history of California’s Mexican roots and displayed the socioeconomic class of the family that lived there. While design as a whole needed to gently support this story, and not bring conscious attention to itself, I still wanted the lighting design to help play a character within the play.”

“There were moments when the light needed to match the excited energy on stage, but other moments when the lighting needed to help create tension”, she continues. “These moods needed to be supported within the house but also from the exterior of the home. I required a strong sunlight source that could change nuanced color, spread wide enough to cover the windows as a single source, as well as pack a good punch. I also needed quiet fixtures for specials and pick-ups that could blend in well with the rest of the rig.”

Since 2007, Smith has held the position of Professor of Lighting Design at the University of California, Irvine, where she also serves as Associate Dean for Student Success. One of her former students, Nick Saiki, a Product Application and Customer Experience Specialist at Elation, previewed the Proteus Odeon for her at the LDI show in December 2023. Although the “One of the Good Ones” project was not on her schedule at that time, it soon would be and ultimately presented an opportunity for her to trial the fixture for potential use in future productions.

For “One of the Good Ones”, Smith had six Odeon fixtures at her disposal, three used for an upstage window wall with one unit on a ladder offstage left for the main architectural window and front door, plus two units on a downstage truss over the audience used for pick-ups.

The Odeon can play a dual role in a single show, as a high CRI light in one scene and an effect light with high output in the next, a flexibility that was on display at the end of the play when Smith had an opportunity to delve deeper into the Odeon’s feature set for a post curtain call moment. Here the designer put the fixtures into “full dance party mode”, repositioning them and unveiling more the effects package of gobos, color, prisms, etc.

Smith worked closely with Keannak Parvaz (Lighting Programmer), Kassia Curl (Assistant Lighting Designer) and Vsev Krawczeniuk (Master Electrician) on the show.

(Photos: Jeff Lorch/Keannak Parvaz)

www.elationlighting.com

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