Stage Directions

Cast Software Ltd. of Toronto, Canada, will release wysiwyg R27 on 11 July 2011. Available for “members” (users who have bought the full license to wysiwyg), the release promises visualizations that run five times faster.

The Lightronics XC Series of Compact Dimmers is introducing a new line of compact dimmers with a new look and new features.

 

You know I’m a sucker for high-tech productions, and this one sounds fantastic. The National Theatre of Scotland did a production of Macbeth set in an asylum, with Alan Cumming playing all the roles, interacting with virtual versions of himself. In order to pull all this off, Ian William Galloway of the video design group Mesmer created original visuals, and worked with Salvador Bettencourt Ávila and the National Theatre of Scotland design team to create a camera and video system that could record and playback Cumming live so he could interact with himself. XL Video’s Catalyst media servers were used to control all video, control the cameras, capture the live video, manipulate it and send it out to the monitors on set. The icing on this tech cake? Ávila uses his own custom-made iPad app to control everything.

 

 

In what can only be described as a plot to make me feel old, the musical Rent celebrated a 20^th birthday of sorts this year: It was first workshopped in NYC in 1993. To commemorate this birthday, a new concert production of the show toured the U.K. The production designer on the show was Ben M. Rogers, who made extensive use of LED video panels, mainly from Pixled, supplied by XL Video.

This is a really cool story. Jon Driscoll was asked to design digital scenery and projection elements for a 25^th-anniversary celebration of Phantom of the Opera in London. Driscoll spent about two months compiling source video material, mostly from the late Maria Björnson’s original designs, which he treated to appear digitally and work in a new setting. XL Video supplied the LED screens and all things video for the celebration, which took place at Royal Albert Hall and was broadcast to theatres around the world.

 

XL Video doubled down on its participation at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year. Ed Cooper and a team of four supplied twice as much gear to various venues across the Fringe, and XL Video was again the main sponsor of the Pleasance Theatre. They also supplied video for the Assembly Theatre, the Underbelly and the Gilded Balloon. In addition to gear in the theare, they supplied large-format projector for building projections in the Pleasance Courtyard. One system was a decorative projection pixel-mapped on the distinctive corner turret of the Courtyard, produced by Pleasance’s Theo Davies. The other projection was on the walkway corridor in the Courtyard and displayed info. The other site was a walkway corridor linking the two elements of the Pleasance Courtyard, which provided info about daily events. It was projected using a Christie Roadster, with content stored on a Mac and played back via QLab software to allow for up-to-the-minute announcements and changes. A slideshow of pics of the video throughout the Fringe is below.

 

XL Video supplied the video equipment for the 2013 Olivier Awards (the U.K. awards that honor the best of British theatre) and sponsored the Olivier Award for Best Set Design. XL supplied the center-stage LED screen, built from 84 Pixled FX-11 tiles, two side screens made up of 5 x 6 tiles and 5 x 8 Pixled panels in portrait mode. XL Video also supplied scenic LED for the band risers in the form of Barco MiStrips as well as video for the live outside broadcast site in Covent Garden Piazza. Full details about the kit and the video set up after the jump.

Held every other year, the SoundLab at USITT offers students a chance to get hands-on time with high-end gear and mix on larger systems that they wouldn’t regularly have the opportunity to mix with. This year, Yamaha Commercial Audio Systems made a key contribution to the SoundLab when they supplied three CL5 consoles (two at FOH, one for monitors), and a CL1 (at FOH to handle special events requirements). The whole system was connected via Dante and included Yamaha Rio boxes onstage for inputs and outputs to the mains. Additionally, Yamaha supplied industry veterans to mentor the students, including Buford Jones, Jim Van Bergen and Kevin Kimmel.

NEW HAVEN, CT—Yale Repertory Theatre has received a $950,000 gift from the Robina Foundation in support of the Yale Center for New Theatre. This gift is an addition to the Foundation’s 2008 gift of $2.85 million, which established the Yale Center for New Theatre, and extends Robina’s support of the Center’s activities through June 2012. The Yale Center for New Theatre is an integrated, artist-driven initiative to support the creation of new plays and musicals for the American stage through residencies, readings, workshops and full productions. A key component of the Center’s work is the support of productions of Yale-commissioned works at theatres other than Yale Rep—over the next four years, more than $600,000 will be committed to this project. The Yale Center for New Theatre also facilitates playwrights’ and composers’ residencies as lecturers at the School of Drama. The Center is overseen by Artistic Director James Bundy and Associate Artistic Director Jennifer Kiger, director of Yale Repertory Theatre’s new play program.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — The Yale School of Drama (Dean, James Bundy) and Yale School of Music (Dean, Robert Blocker) have joined forces to create the Yale Institute for Music Theatre, which exists to identify distinctive and original music theatre works by emerging writers and composers, and to serve those writers by matching them with collaborators who can help them further develop their work in an un-pressured workshop setting.