The Cape Town leg of Starlight Classics, produced by Rand Merchant Bank and
production by Jam Events, was hosted at the Vergelegen Wine Estate in Somerset
West in March.
This is one of Lighting Designer Joshua Cutts’ favourite shows and he worked in
close collaboration with fellow designer Christopher Bolton from Keystone. Technical
elements supplied by Gearhouse Group included the main stage and venue lighting,
structures, sets, rigging and power as well as the centre LED Screen.
“This is the fourth year that I have been involved in Starlight Classics as the lighting
designer, and it has been pretty cool. When I took over as LD I kept things pretty
much the same as they had always been, but after my first year, I changed the
direction in terms of my design approach towards the show.’ said Cutts. He
requested that all the rigging and trussing, from which the lighting had been
traditionally hung, be removed. Now the lighting is hung individually off the roof
structure, a massive, but worthwhile, undertaking by the Gearhouse crew led by
Peter Abrahamse.
The same dome stage supplied by Gearhouse In2structures is used time and again.
“There are a lot of regular things that we do that work very well,’ says Joshua.
There is a fairly specific layout for the orchestra and the show flows from this,
under the baton of the superbly talented conductor, Richard Cock. “We try to reuse
similar set elements and keep the identity of Starlight the same.’ The main drive is
to create fresh designs for new songs and to complement lighting with the screen
content, provided by Stefan van der Walt from CI nation, another newbie to the
Starlight Family, and Peter Heaney from 9mm Productions. While some of the
songs in Cape Town are repeated from the Johannesburg show held towards the end
of 2015, at least half the show was different and Cutts and Bolton had to come up
with new looks for those.
This is the first time the pair did multi user programming in Cape Town. They had
two MA 2 Lite consoles at front of house in complete sync with both programmers
and operators.
Having done a lot of the ground work in Johannesburg on the previous Starlight
Cutts and Bolton had time to focus on fine tuning and adding in bits and pieces they
felt would improve the show. “Once we had the clearances all was smooth sailing,
as it always is when we work with Peter Abrahamse and the Gearhouse team,’ says
Cutts.
“It was a mixed rig for lighting. I always use the trusty Robin 600 LED Wash as my
blanket to colour wash over the whole stage. I use the Robe 2500 ColorWash as my
main source of floodlight because I’ve always found them to be complimentary to
skin tones when used from the front. I used the MAC Vipers as gobo and beam work
from the top. Robin Pointes to cut through all of this to give me the beams that I
need. Many performance pieces, like a few of the dance items, require theatrical
side lighting and I always use the REDWashes for that. Because I rig off the
structure and the structure now becomes part of the set element, I use LEDForce
18s to tone the entire truss structure so that I can use it as part of my lighting
effects.’
Concludes Bolton, “Most people in this industry are all super talented and passionate
individuals with great spirits who each bring to the table their skill as well as they
can every time. Working on Starlight is one of those shows where you can feel that
from everyone involved. This was truly a memorable experience.’
