Billy: Back In Japan

Rob is delighted to be back in Japan - and back for real, not just virtually! - where he is re-mounting the musical Billy Elliot for its 2024 season.

Rob has a long association with this show, back to the 2011 US Tour; he has since re-created Rick Fisher’s design in Holland, for the UK tour and in Japan and Korea, as well as moving the original London production to a new lighting control system along the way.

The Japanese production first appeared in 2017; it was re-mounted in 2020, but in the height of the Covid travel restrictions that was one of the three productions Rob worked on remotely from London, alongside Waitress (also in Japan) and Billy Elliot in Seoul.

This new production, in a new theatre - Tokyo’s Brilliant Hall in Ikebukuru - continues the gentle evolution and upgrading of the rig, this time replacing the ETC Revolutions with Martin Encore fixtures. The big Vari-Lite VL3500s and VL3000 Washes that have been part of the show since it began remain in place, however; the rig is supplied by PRG.

The Billy Tokyo lighting team includes a number of old friends from previous productions in Japan, including Mata Hari and Waitress, led by Yuta Watanabe, with Sonoko Ishii interpreting.

Billy Elliot previews in Tokyo from July 27th, and opens on August 2nd; it will also play a season in Osaka later in the year.

(Billy Elliot is also the subject of the last interview, with the lighting team that made and now re-makes the show, in the new book Theatre Lighting Design: Conversations on the Art, Craft and Life, to be published by Methuen-Bloomsbury on July 25th but available to pre-order now!)

Billy Elliot Tokyo: {link}
The Book! {link}

Actors And Orchestra Together - EGBDF in Mumbai

Rob has just completed a short trip to Mumbai - his first visit to India - to work on the rarely-staged Tom Stoppard play Every Good Boy Deserves Favour. The show is rarely stage because it involves not just actors but a full orchestra performing the music written by André Previn - but here the forces of Mumbai’s National Centre for the Perfoming Arts and the Symphony Orchestra of India combined to bring the show to life.

Rob was once again working as associate lighting designer and lighting programmer with lighting designer Rick Fisher, with whom he has previously collaborated on projects around the world, with the pair both enjoying the re-union with the NCPA’s Head of Theatre and Film Bruce Guthrie, for whom they have both lit shows before. Alongside them were set designer Francis O’Connor, costume designer Pallavi Patel, sound designer Andy Collins, movement director Rachel D’Souza, music supervisor Matthew Scott and conductor Mikel Toms.

Rick and Rob received excellent support from the Mumbai-based assistant on the show, Akshay Khubchandani, who ensured everything required was available, up and working in the theatre as well as providing a wonderful host to this remarkable city.

As well as getting the show itself on, all involved took part in a workshop organised by the NCPA and stage manager Antonia Collins to introduce young people to the work required to get a show on - an event rapturously well received by those who attended it.

Such is the show’s success that it’s originally scheduled run has been extended by a week to give more people the chance to enjoy it.

Every Good Boy Deserves Favour Mumbai: [link]

Crazy For You - Previewing Now

Rob is delighted to have spent the last couple of weeks in Chichester, programming the lighting for their summer musical, Crazy For You.

The show marks a welcome return to in-person collaboration with lighting designer Ken Billington. The last time Rob worked with Ken, one of them was in London, the other was in New York and the production was in a different country altogether, the Japanese production of Waitress lit entirely remotely because of Coronavirus travel restrictions.

This time Ken, Rob and associate lighting designer Dale Driscoll, along with everyone else, have been together the same place, very well looked after by the wonderful Chichester crew and all revelling in the work of director-choreographer Susan Stroman, with whom Rob last worked on the National Theatre’s acclaimed production of Oklahoma! in London and New York.

Crazy For You is previewing now, with its press night on July 19th.

Crazy For You: [link]

Death Drop Takes To The Road

Death Drop, one of the shows which played in London during the various early stages of unlocking last year and earlier this year, has now hit the road so that all of the UK can enjoy this unique drag murder mystery…

Rob was delighted to work once again with lighting designer Jack Weir, re-creating and programming the show lighting for him at the first stop on the tour in Southend with a compressed version of the set, then programming at the second stop in Salford as the show stepped back up to its full design.

The show is now making its way around the UK. Full details can be found here: [link].

Back In A Theatre - For Real!

In complete contrast to some recent projects - Rob is delighted to be back in a real theatre with the real performers and the real lights, getting the UK tour of the musical Waitress up and running.

This is the production that Rob worked on remotely in Japan back in January with lighting designer Ken Billington and associate lighting designer Aaron Porter. It was interesting to load the show into the desk and see what things actually looked like - which, as it turned out, were pretty good!

With Ken Billington in New York re-opening the Broadway production of the show, the relight here was carried out by Aaron Porter, with regular note-swapping across the Atlantic so that changes being made to the show in New York could be incorporated into the tour here.

All of this was ably supported by production electrician Chris Vaughan and the touring lighting team of Ben Webster, Thomas Pritchard and Robin Potter.

Waitress launched its tour at the New Wimbledon Theatre, and is now making its way around the country.

Watiress: [link]

Long Range Lighting, Again...

A year on from re-creating Billy Elliot in Japan remotely, five months on from programming Waitress in Japan remotely, Rob is remote-re-lighting and remote-programming again - this time for Billy Elliot in Korea.

Remote lighting plans were put in place for this production at a point when travel into Seoul from the UK was not allowed. Even as that became possible (with two week quarantining), Rob decided to continue to work remotely because of the uncertainty surrounding international travel. Lovely as Seoul is, it would be unfortunate to be there and have the rules change so you weren’t allowed home…

The remote working system Rob has designed is a refinement from that used for Waitress, with two video feeds offering the best balance between image quality and low latency, and then a working set-up that includes a large monitor for stage view, and an Eos Ti console connected to the Korean console via theBRIDGE networking system. Considerable care was taken with camera specification and, particularly, colour camera set-up to give the best possible representation of the stage to those working from afar. As before the only drawback is a crazy work schedule: a Korean working day maps to a 1am-2pm day in the UK.

The other different this time is that the lighting designer, Rick Fisher, will get to be in the theatre once he is allowed out of quarantine - so there will be ‘eyes in the room’ and so an ability to make real, useful comparisons between the on-stage image and the on-camera image.

Technical rehearsals for Billy Elliot in Korea begin today; the show previews from August 31st, and opens on September 5th.

Remote Lighting at Virtual Showlight 2021: [link]

Lighting and Programming Without Leaving Home

Rob is currently programming the musical Waitress in Tokyo from the front room of his home in London - working with the lighting designer Ken Billington, who is sitting in his office in New York!

One of those things that would have been dismissed as nonsense a year ago, before Coronavirus hit, now feels almost normal - and while it’s certainly not an ideal way of lighting a show, it does at least allow a show to be lit at a time when travel restrictions mean there was on other way of lighting it.

Rob was originally scheduled to work on the show in Tokyo, having programmed the London production of the show for Ken a couple of years ago. However, as Japan closed its borders to arrivals from America and the UK yet the show’s producers decided to press ahead with the musical, an alternative plan had to be formed. The question: was it possible to light a show with the production desks spanning the world?

The immediate challenge was whether it was possible to connect two ETC Eos consoles across the internet. It seemed that a Virtual Private Network (VPN) would be required, ideally one that was easy to configure. Research led to the discovery of the company Just Networking, who it turned out were making the perfect pandemic product: theBRIDGE, a hardware VPN solution aimed at the entertainment industry. They’d tested it with grandMA consoles successfully; their UK distributor LCR supplied a couple of units and tests were carried out using Eos consoles between two locations in London - successfully! Additional units were immediately dispatched to Tokyo and London.

Next, Ken Billington’s associate Aaron Porter designed a system of Zoom calls to effectively replace both the traditional comms in the theatre and the traditional view of the stage from the auditorium. Finally some additional equipment - consoles, large monitors to provide a stage view - was delivered to Ken Billington’s office in New York and Rob’s home in London by the show’s lighting supplier, PRG.

Finally, all of the elements were put together as the show loaded-in in Tokyo: the consoles came on line, Zoom connected everyone together, there was some adjustment of cameras to make the picture look like everyone remembered the show to looking like (since the rig and showfile are from earlier productions), and off the show marched into a rapid tech… The will to make it work and the support of the team in Japan, particularly production manager Takaaki Tanaka, head of lighting Wataru Okazaki and his team from ASG, and interpreter Sonoko Ishii.

It’s not an ideal way of lighting, and not definitely not how you’d want to work if you had a choice. But it works - and as a result the show will open on time in Tokyo next Tuesday, March 9th, before touring.

Waitress Japan: [link]
theBRIDGE: [link]
Ken Billington talks about the project: [link]

Why Does My Console Do That (- find out on January 19th!)

Rob is delighted to have been asked back online by Martin Professional - this time on Tuesday January 19th, with a presentation that combines his loves of both the very latest lighting technology - and the generations of lighting technology that led up to it.

Entitled Why Does My Console Do That?, the talk also has a subtitle - the sometimes unexpected histories of functions we take for granted - and why some have gone missing along the way - that explains a bit more about the content. Rob’s aim is to take key functions we take for granted on current lighting consoles - ‘record’, or ‘track’, or ‘preheat’ - and trace their history back through generations of lighting controls to see just where they came from, and why they were put there in the first place. Sometimes that will track back to lighting control before computers. Sometimes even further back, to lighting control before electricity!

As well as looking at key functions that we still have, Rob will also touch upon some very useful functionality that has somehow got lost along the way - and will wonder aloud whether some of it could usefully make a comeback.

The variety of hats Rob wears provides the background to what should be a fun look back at lighting history rather than a dry history lesson. As a lighting designer and programmer he’s often been the first to use the latest technology on shows. But he also charts lighting history in his monthly Classic Gear column in LSi magazine, and was one of the creators of the UK’s Backstage Heritage Collection which aims to document entertainment technology online and preserve it in real life.

The talk takes places on Tuesday, January 19th at 5pm UK Time / 11am US Central Time. You can book online now: [link].

Details of the many other online sessions being offered by Martin and Harman can be found here:
[link].