Staging and Lighting Tech Work at Fremont Abbey

A Tuning the Air Journal

Monday September 7, 2009 – Staging and Lighting Tech Work at Fremont Abbey

A holiday, but we needed to finalize staging questions for Tuning the Air. Since it is a holiday, that meant that the Great Hall at Fremont Abbey Arts Center was not otherwise booked, and so this was our best opportunity to get in at the same time of day that performances will take place, to set up the various lighting alternatives and make the necessary choices.

Travis met me at my place at 8pm to go through the lighting gear and other staging materials stored in my spare room. We loaded the necessary equipment and headed over to the Abbey. Naturally, once at the Abbey I realized I had forgotten my guitar and drum stool, necessary so that I could be the dummy in the lighting mock-ups. Chris, Christina, Travis and I loaded the gear out of my car, and then I ran home to get my stuff. Fortunately only about a 3-minute drive. By the time I got back, Jaxie had arrived as well, and work had begun.

While the technical side of laying things out was going on, Jaxie and I looked at several different ways of organizing the lobby area, and came up with a pretty good plan.

A number of different approaches to lights were explored, ranging from the return of the Columns of Awesomeness to hanging reflectors on fishing wire. In the end, simple and elegant won the day. No doubt, once we have inhabited the room for a while we will discover any number of ways to grow, but tonight’s resolution has the virtue of making friends with the space, and leaves a great deal of flexibility for new ideas and inspirations to present themselves. Wonderful.

The big scare came once we had all of the new lights set up and running, Travis and I played a bit of guitar, including some circulating and a couple renditions of “Lament”. The whirring of the fans from the new lights, though not screamingly loud, was clearly audible, and was taking away some of the space in the quiet end of our dynamic range. At this point, after a couple hours of work, I was disheartened. We agreed to set the lights back up next Thursday when the whole team is there to rehearse. Then, as we were experimenting with the last minute idea someone had, which would become the final lighting arrangement, it occurred to us to walk around and listen to individual lights. One seemed quite loud to me, so I unplugged it and Voila!, Silence. Just one light with a bad fan, and not an inherent flaw in the light model.

So, beautiful new working lights and just one unit to return for a quieter one. Joy!

Adding Thursday rehearsals to the calendar for the final two weeks leading up to opening night. This week we will be back in Fremont Abbey, with lights set up for Meleah to work with, and Joel in the house to begin discovering how his preshow music will work in the space. Next Thursday the Abbey is booked, so rehearsal will be at either my place or the Wilsons. On the final Saturday before we open we will do a full tech runthrough.