Sunday in the Park with George Page 1

Bringing Order to the WholeTheatre technology finally catches up with Sunday in the Park with GeorgeBy: David Barbour

Photography: Joan MarcusReprinted with permission from Lighting&Sound America, April 2008. www.lightingandsoundamerica.com

Some shows are ahead of their time because of their content, and others because of the technical demands they pose. When Stephen Sondheim and James Lapines Sunday in the Park with George opened in 1984, it managed to divide nearly everyone with its original sub-ject matter and style, while running over 600 performances and nabbing a Pulitzer Prize. It represents an extreme iteration of the so-called concept musical, in which a single govern-ing idea predominates, as opposed to plot and characters.

Act I centers on a fictionalized version of the French Impressionist painter Georges Seurat as he labors on his masterpiece, Sunday After-noon on the Island of La Grand Jatte (1884-86). In Lapines libretto, many of the figures in the painting become persons who are connected to George (as he is known in the show). Chief among them is Dot, his mistress and model, a practical-minded woman who feels shut out by Georges feverish devotion to his work. (Georges painting technique, in which an image is created out of thousands of dots of color that the eye arranges into a pattern, is dismissed by his colleagues as aberrant.)

Infuriated by Georges neglect, and pregnant with his child, Dot leaves him for Louis, a baker, and moves to America. George is devastated, but keeps working, using his sketches to create a painting that will be universally acknowledged as a masterpiece.

Act II takes place a century later, and focuses on another artist named George; he is his namesakes great-grandson by Dot. George has invented his own medium, a color-and-light ma-chine called the Chromolume (Its an allusion to Seurats color theory, Chromoluminarism. If the first George is so obsessed with his vision that he alienates those who love him, his descen-

dant is spiritually depleted by the demands of constant networking with critics, curators, and patrons.) At the urging of Marie, his grandmoth-er (and Dots daughter), George travels to La Grande Jatte. There, in a strange turn of events that reaches across time, he meets Dot, who of-fers a healing benediction.

The original Broadway production was hailed as a design triumph. Tony Straiges setting pro-vided a kind of stereoscopic vision of Seurats painting, with actors placed against a series of flat objects located on different planes. Richard Nelsons gorgeously dappled lighting completed the image; both of them took Tony Awards for their efforts. (The production also featured costumes by Patricia Zipprodt and Ann Hould-Ward and sound by Tom Morse.) In retrospect, however, their work remained rooted in the world of tactile, dimensional materials.

The Broadway revival, which comes to Round-about Theatres Studio 54 from Londons Me-nier Chocolate Factory via a hit West End run, makes use of the most up-to-date capabilities of projection technology to give us a view of the first Georges creative mind at work. It must have been a natural approach for the direc-tor, Sam Buntrock, who, earlier in his career, was an animation director for many television shows. To realize this projection-driven pro-duction, he has engaged Timothy Bird and his firm, Knifedge: The Creative Network; using the whole of David Farleys atelier setting as a canvas, Bird and his colleagues have designed enormous images that are continually subject to revision and undergo dramatic shifts of per-spective. This technique is made apparent at the top of show, when Daniel Evans, who plays both Georges, says the first words of the script: White, a blank page or canvas. The challenge: Bring order to the whole through design, com-

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position, balance, light, and harmony. As he speaks, an invisible hand moves over the set, filling it with pencil scratches until it arrives at a black-and-white sketch of La Grande Jatte. Its an extraordinary moment.

This design concept had implications for every-one on the creative team, including Farley, light-ing designer Ken Billington, and sound designer Sebastian Frost. All worked in an unusually intertwined collaboration. Theatre design and technology, it would seem, has finally caught up with Lapine and Sondheims vision.

The stage as canvas Conceptually speaking, I call Tim Bird my co-designer, says David Farley. We worked very closely on developing the look of the show. The design, he adds, is rooted in the concept that we are in Georges studio, and he takes us to the park as he works. For me, it was so key to integrate the projections with the performers, to make it their world.

Entering the theatre, one sees the studio. (There is no show curtain.) Its a large room, designed in the Empire style, with cream-colored walls. There are enormous double doors at left and right, with additional single doors further up-stage. There is a large swag of cream-colored drapes at upstage center. Its a grand, open space, yet the plaster is cracked in several places. Downstage right, at the proscenium, one sees a table and two shelves containing paint-ers gear (brushes, frames, and bottles of vari-ous colors). On the opposite side is Dots vanity table, with pieces of cheap jewelry hanging on the wall. The stage is raked.

The idea of the studio as the base setting is im-portant, says Farley, as it allows for projections onto real surfacesthese walls, with all their architectural details. Its a way of giving the im-ages a kind of tangibility. (The upstage wall is made of RP screen; the left and right walls are functional scenic pieces, however, and are built as such.) As the show begins and we are trans-ferred to La Grand Jatte, the first large-scale projectionthe black-and-white sketch of the islandforms a panorama that covers all three walls of the set. Later, as Georges work on the

painting progresses, the image will take on the colors of the finished painting. There are many imaginative details: The upstage swag parts in two and become a pair of trees, their transfor-mation aided by projections. Later, during the number The Day Off, a pair of dogs appear, each in a little picture frame placed downstage.

The concept of projecting, say, a tree-shaped im-age on a tree-shaped surface was inspired, Far-ley says, by the visual artist Tony Oursler: Hes made an installation of rag dolls sitting in the corner of a gallery, with images of babies crying or talking projected onto the faces of the dolls. The use of such objects as projection screens, he adds, is central to the shows concept, as it al-lows George to arrange anything onstage, in the manner of an artist creating a still life; the stage is his canvas. This is seen clearly in the first-act finale, when George arranges the actors into a tableau of Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

Its an idea thats central to many non-projec-tion effects, as well, says Farley: Its how we present The Bathers, as an image that becomes a painting in the gallery. Hes referring to the scene that deals with the creation of Seurats Bathers at Asnires; a wagon rolls onstage with young men in swimsuits on a riverbank; a frame flies in front of the wagon, turning it into a work of art. This segues into the number No Life, in which Jules, Georges colleague, and his wife, Yvonne, belittle Georges work.

As in the case of the Bathers wagon, the very few additional set pieces travel on and off, from one set of double doors through the other, via a slipstage. Farley says it was a solution devised for the Menier Chocolate Factory, where we had no flies, but lots of wing space. We had the same technique in the West End. Now, at Studio 54, we have no wing space at all! The slipstage system has become an incredibly complicated piece of engineering.

Because theres insufficient space offstage left, the track turns vertical and runs up the wall, says Rick Mone, project manager for Hudson Scenic Studio, which built, painted, and auto-mated the scenery. The solution isnt as simple as it looks, he adds. Its a raked deck, so, to allow the vertical track to rise plumb, the hinge

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geometry between slipstage sections is like an automobile door. The pivot axis is not parallel to the plane of the slipstage. If, for example, we had used a simple piano hinge between each section, when it turned vertical it would rise perpendicular to the raked show deck, compli-cating the track and causing the vertical slip-stage to lean downstage at the angle of the rake. We made hinges that get the hinge axes aligned with the house deck, not the raked show deck, and allow the pieces to clear each other as they fold. They were designed by Roger Bardwell, our chief engineer.

Most of Act II is set in a gallery, where the sec-ond George debuts his new work, before mov-ing to the modern version of La Grande Jatte for the finale. The same basic studio set becomes the gallery. There are so many galleries these daysthere are quite a few in Londonthat are fabulous old period buildings that have been whitewashed to look modern, says Farley. So why not make it an old town house in New York thats been converted into a cool gallery? During the intermission, the details that made it George and Dots space are removed, and the patched plaster is replaced with pristine panels.

The decision to keep the same basic environ-ment helps provide a visual link between the two acts. Farley adds that he took the same approach in designing the costumes, trying to link little bits of detail in each act. For example, the actress Stacie Morgan Lewis, who plays a comically adulterous cook in Act I, wears the same boots in Act II, when she appears as an artist at Georges opening. Its a canny choice for a musical that has often been criticized for being two shows connected by a single theme, rather than a single cohesive work.

Projecting the park Timothy Bird is creative director of Knifedge: The Creative Network, a U.K.-based firm that provides marketing and branding services in the business sector, as well as music, video, and animations for cultural and entertain-ment projects. In a way, he worked as a kind of creative director for the productions visual aspect, integrating animated video content with Farleys scenery and Billingtons lighting. Its

an approach that required intensive prepara-tion; Farley says that he and Bird worked with a detailed set of storyboards to plan each mo-ment. Tim and I photographed the set model with all the scene setupsand then, using a lot of the still imagery for the parks, photoshopped the images in, to see what it would look like. We then presented it to Sam [Buntrock] and Ken Billington, discussing what we were hoping to achieve. It should be noted here that Studio 54, which seats about 1,000, is a much bigger space than the Menier Chocolate Factory which seats less than 200, or Wyndhams Theatre in the West End, which accommodates about 700. Given this difference and the fact that Ken Bil-lington joined the team for New York, the de-signers essentially started over.

If the projections are enormous, they also fea-ture various kinds of movement. Look closely at the panorama of La Grande Jatte, and youll see a boat sailing by, or one person or another entering or leaving the picture. At one point, during the number Sunday, when a lyric refer-ences Dots parasol, the screen is briefly filled with such objects. The dogs that appear in The Day Off frolic inside their canvases. When Dot sings the title tune, a aria of complaint about her relationship with George, while posing for him, her shadow grows to several times its normal height; this cues a freeze-frame moment onstage, signaling to the audience that were hearing Dots inner thoughts. There are track-ing shots, including one on the upstage wall of the Act II gallery set that moves us from one room to another, where Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte is hung; Farley says it is inspired by a similar tracking shot in the Woody Allen film Manhattan.

In a way, Bird deconstructs the painting, pre-senting it in various states of progress. The brief from Sam Buntrock was to look at Seurats studies and sketches, he says. In particular, we wanted to find a way of bringing the look of his cont [drawing] work alive onstage. We started by recreating the geometry of the park in a virtual 3-D space. The projection programmer, Sam Hopkins, used the previsualization project ESP Vision, to do this; the company implement-ed aspect ratio as a feature for us, so we could correctly pre-author the content, says Hopkins.

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Everythingthe water level, the bankwas modeled in a virtual landscape, says Bird. In particular, we knew we needed to be deft with the black-and-white sketch seen early in the show, because it tracks for the scene with the bathers. When they appear, the slipstage moves them from stage right to stage left, and the imagery moves with it. Its not simply a picture that we slide along; its an actual 3-D environ-ment moving across to create the illusion of par-allax, as you would get in, say, a moving train.

Bird says his team from Knifedge, including Shaun Freeman, who worked as a senior anima-tor on the feature film Happy Feet, added bits of character movement to the visuals. He notes that Buntrock got into the game, too, exercising his animation skills. Not everything made it into the final version, however. We were brutal with each other, says Farley. Many things were nice, but they didnt help to tell the story.

There are other perceptual shifts within the imagery. In Act I, Dot sings Everybody Loves Louis, in which she tries to convince herself that shes making the right romantic choice; as the music begins, the projections shift to a pur-ple-magenta look. The number becomes more introspective, and the color drains out of the im-ages, suggesting that Dot may be fooling herself. As she sings the lyrics We choose things/And then we lose things, the color drains away, as the center of hope disappears, says Bird. Other details, such as a pair of windows in Georges studio, are projected with such subtlety that they appear to be actual set pieces. color drains away, as the center of hope disappears, says Bird. Other details, such as a pair of windows in Georges studio, are projected with such subtle-ty that they appear to be actual set pieces.

Many images are front-projected, an astound-ing achievement, as one never sees distracting shadows or video images on the actors bod-ies. Hopkins used ESP Vision to see where the projectors would go and the adjustments we needed to make, says Bird. In New York, adds Hopkins, we mounted the projectors on the ad-vance truss, rather than the [balcony rail]; this gave us a much higher angle to get at themhence the very useful network control, where [thanks to a wireless router] I could adjust the projectors from my laptop wirelessly from the

house.

Its a very steep angle, agrees Bird. In es-sence, we come in over the actors heads. This approach required intensive keystone correc-tion for each image, some of which was worked out in advance by Hopkins and the content team, and some of which is accomplished using the Catalyst software in the media servers. The system consists of three dual-head Catalysts driving five Barco CLMR10+ projectors and one SLM R12 unit.

The video is controlled by a High End Systems Wholehog III console, which is linked to the lighting control system. Hopkins notes that, be-cause the New York production included several gear upgrades, we totally reprogrammed from scratch. Projection gear was supplied by XL Video.

As accomplished as the Act I visuals are, Bird and company achieve two critical effects in Act II. In some ways, the most challenging task is the realization of the second Georges art work, Chromolume #7. In any production of Sunday in the Park with George, the design team faces the almost impossible task of creating an aesthetic for the second George; it must be a convincingly avant-garde piece of work, which establishes him as an artist in his own right. Here, it is a dazzling, room-filling display of primary colors presented in abstract arrangements of dots and lines; in its deployment of red, green, and blue dots, it provides a link to the first Georges Pointilistic style. It was relatively complicated to do, says Bird, because weve created a vir-tual gallery space, with a trompe loeil effectand then we apply light effects to that. Its a projection on top of a projection, if you will, with matching lighting effects that extend the image into the auditorium.

This is followed by the number Putting it To-gether, in which George, at a gallery reception, describes how he keeps his career going. The number calls for multiple representations of George, which are done with projections; at one point, there are four virtual Georges onstage in addition to the real George. The real George even pours champagne into a cup held by his virtual double.

It took a lot of head-scratching to make it

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the former country retreat has become an ur-ban landscape. Bird, who has never visited the place, says the image was derived from a series of photographs taken by Buntrock. Its not a literal reproduction; the details have been com-posited together to suit the needs of the show. Its a matte painting, executed by Alex Laurant, who is now back working for Industrial Light and Magic, says Bird. He was one of the con-cept artists who worked on [the Brendan Fraser film] The Mummy. We were very fortunate that he lived next to Sam Buntrock at the time of the first staging of Sunday.

The thing I was most pleased with, visually, is the extent to which we were able to get Seurats drawing style, adds Bird. This is a combina-tion of me and John Keates, an original member of our animation team. Hes a painter by back-ground, and a very scientific mind. Its quite possibly the most vivid account of an artists process ever to be seen onstage.

Color and lightKen Billington admits that it was a daunting task to light a stage that is, in effect, a projec-tion screen. However, he adds, I wasnt scared by it. Maybe it comes from having done a lot of shows with projections over the years. And he was very clear about his intentions: When I went into my first meeting, I said, The name of the show is Sunday in the Park with Georgenot Sun-night. This show is not going to be dark. In many shows, when the projections come on, the lighting is compromised; sometimes, during a production number, I want to say, Can we just turn on the lights? I didnt want that to happen here. Fortunately, they agreed. He adds that the Barco projectors are so bright (the CLMs are 10,000 lumens and the SLM is 12,000) that he doesnt have to soft-pedal the lighting; this is probably why the enormous projections dont overwhelm the people onstage.

Its been great working with Ken and his team, says Bird, looking at how to fuse together what were doing with projected light and what hes doing with, well, projected light. You know, theres very little difference between what a projector does and what a lighting fixture does.

work, says Bird, adding that the sequence involved virtually every member of the creative team. The order of play was something like this: Sam Buntrock and Christopher Gattelli [who staged the musical numbers] worked closely with Daniel Evans in the rehearsal stu-dio, working out the particular bits of action. Chris wrote a movement script, listing what all of the doppelgangers would do, and then Caro-line Humphris [the musical supervisor] set the musical tempo and recorded a click track.

I came in and worked out what they were do-ing, how it would affect the cue structure, and what we needed to shoot. Its a feature of this show that at no point can you cut, like you do in a film; it all has to work seamlessly, from one clip to the next. You have to shoot it all in one go. That required planning. Using the click-track, Daniel rehearsed it to within an inch of his life. Then we went to a studio, and had a di-rector of photography light it, with Ken Billing-ton there to make sure that the lighting of the virtual performer would match the lighting of the people onstage. We shot it all with a green screen, to be able to cut out, or key, the perform-er. At this point, my role stopped being that of a designer and became more like a first assistant director on a film shootI was the person who understood the crossover between the theatre team and the film team. For example, the film crew might want to reposition the camera, but you cant do that. You have to lock it off.

After it was shot and Sam chose the takes he wanted to use, we took the footage and keyed out Daniels background, rendering the final clips with an Alpha channel. This allowed us to use a series of layers in the media server, which allowed us to drop in a cutout of Daniel wher-ever we needed him in the set. And there you are, really. He adds that theres a version of the sequence shot with Evans understudy, should he need to go on, and another, more generic, shadow-play version. On the whole, we like it for Daniel not to get sick, he adds wryly. It wouldnt work so well without his metronomic precision; he is uniquely capable of working to this level of detail, with this slightly terrifying projection machine.

The show ends at the 1984 version of La Grande Jatte, a photo projection in which we see how

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Billington traveled to London and met with Bird, Farley, and their colleagues, discussing his lighting ideas in unusually detailed fashion. We talked about angles, color shifts, breakups, everything, he says. We spent five days going through the show moment by moment, using the storyboards. [Farley notes that he and Bil-

lington also worked to coordinate the color pal-ettes of the costumes and lighting.] We were in the Knifedge studio, so we used their computer-generated program. They totally accepted me as part of the team. Nobody said, Heres the show; you light it. We really worked on it together. After that, I went home and designed the light

plot.

One big challenge for Billington was the lack of available positions. I only had a couple of electrics overhead, he says, adding that the Act I finale is par-ticularly challenging, because it doesnt allow for any sidelight. His plot consists largely of approximately 230 ETC Source Fours, plus 15 Vari*Lite VL3550Qs and four VL1000s. The 3500s were chosen for their shutters, allow-ing the designer to get precise looks that keep light off the walls. The VL1000s are used to extend the look of the Chromolume into the auditorium. (The light-ing gear was supplied by PRG.) Theres also a pair of Lycian 2K follow-spots, again used in the subtlest possible man-ner, to not distract from the overall stage picture Theyre truly pinspots, just head and shoul-ders, says the designer. Actors walk upstage, but you never see the light on the RP screen, because the spots fade as they move upstage. The followspot opera-tors are brilliant.

Filling out the lighting

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rig are ten MR16s, 14 PAR 64s, one Arri 1.5K HMI Fresnel, four Altman 5K Fresnels, three City Theatrical AutoYokes, one Look Solutions Tiny Fogger, eight High End Systems Dataflash AF1000 strobes, two City Theatrical wireless dimmers, 86 Wybron Coloram scrollers, and one Wybron Eclipse.

Many of what appear to be video effects are, in fact, realized in conjunction with the light-ing. The moment with Dots shadow in the title tune begins as an actual shadow made by the lighting, then the projectors take over. The color-drain effect in Everybody Loves Louis is a similar case: I match it with the lighting, says Billington. Over 40 counts, it goes from normal color to magenta-purple to black and white, then snaps back to the magenta. Thats some-thing you couldnt have done only a few years ago.

The lighting works intimately with the projec-tions in less obvious ways, as well. Billington cites the gallery scenes, with the tracking shot that leads to a room where Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is on display. The projections change with every light cue, so the image matches the walls onstage. We went through everything; Sam Hopkins would warm up an image or Id change something. It was fun to do. In the early Grand Jatte scenes, to match the black and white images, Billington says, the lighting is truly all Lee 203. When the projections shift to color, in comes GAM 155 [Light Pink]. Also, the gobos change. We get to the proper Pointilist gobos at the end of the first act; before that, we have a very streaky gobo look. We use many, many gobos [from GAM, Inline, and Apollo], a lot of them custom-made. For example, theres a Chromolume gobo based on their artwork; the lighting extends the Chro-molume effect into the auditorium. I sent them all the gobos I was using and they worked them into the video.

Indeed, Bird says, the collaboration between lighting and projections was achieved through a series of painstaking and often minute ad-justments. He cites the studio scene, in which George and Dot sing Color and Light. Evans is upstage center, standing behind a scrim on which is projected an unfinished version of La Grande Jatte. Jenna Russell, who plays Dot,

is downstage left, getting dressed for a night at the music hall. In addition to the projec-tion of the painting, theres also a projection of windows on the upstage wall. There are little movements of light, changing intensity between George and Dot, with Ken deftly tweaking the lighting, says Bird. Theres ambient bounce light hitting the floor and walls. The floor is brown; when certain colors hit it, it affects the walls more than youd imagine. Were matching the colors as close as we can; the net result is, you forget the windows are projections. Thats the result of Sam Hopkins sitting there, wait-ing as Ken plotted the lights; every time he relit something, Sam worked with his console, put-ting in a little magenta by .25%, dropping the intensity by 5%so you have maybe 50 cues running through the scene, none of which the audience sees.

As mentioned, Billington was on hand for the shooting of the video effects for Putting It Together, although the task was still difficult, he notes, because it was shot before we lit the show. However, he adds, I knew it would be about sidelight. In more than one of the numbers effects, a door opens and becomes a screen for one of the virtual Georges. From the audience, it appears that Daniel Evans is standing next to his projected image; in fact, hes standing about a foot upstage of the door, so Billington can hit him with sidelight. Theres a similar effect in Act I, when a soldier appears with his colleague and best friend, who is a video image. There are mirrors on the back of the proscenium, so the actors can watch the video and interact with the images, he adds.

The lighting is controlled by an ETC Obsession II console, linked to a PRG Virtuoso, which han-dles the moving lights, as well as to the Hog III for the projections. There are 280 cues, which is a lot for a simple musical, says Billington. If I dont have a light cue, it may be a video cue, or it may have a delay built into it, so the lighting and video match. Its all run by one man. We talked about this at great lengththe type of consoles, how it would all be triggered. We have SMPTE for the Chromolume sequence. Theres a click track to link the video to the music in Putting it Together. The click track sends a MIDI signal to the console to run the light cues. The Obsession

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shows essentially intimate nature while pro-viding room to open up for big moments like Sunday, with its majestic choral singing, and Putting It Together, which builds to a dramatic climax. To this end, Frosts rig is built for both eventualities. The loudspeaker system consists of a mixture of Meyer Sound UPA boxes for the orchestra and Tannoy T3836 units, with open drivers for the vocals. We needed to get some width into the system, he says about the Tan-noy gear. Its a very open and natural-sounding box. Obviously, we also have a fairly heavy use of the UPAs in the center cluster for the vocals. He adds that the latter is slightly more sepa-rated than a cluster would usually be, to get a general sound off of the proscenium. There are additional UPAs in the mezzanine for delay and a set of EAW JF80s for orchestra delay.

In addition, he says, The set is much wider than what weve had before; it collects the sound from the auditorium onto the stage, which makes it hard for the performers to hear each other. Weve added some light vocal foldback, with four [EAW] JF60s over the stage.

To unite these zones and create a seamless sound, Frost uses a VRAS (Variable Room Acoustic) system, a processing product from LCS/Meyer Sound. We have 14 microphones around the auditorium, which feed the VRAS; it works through various reverberations and early reflection algorithims to apparently change the acoustics, based on where youre sitting. The system handles most of the sound processing, he says, For example, there are no reverb units on the vocals; its all done by the VRAS. In Act II, when George makes the presen-tation of his work, the system mimics the hard acoustics of a picture gallery. The LCS units do all the processing and matrixing of the system. It allows the Yamaha PM5D console to concen-trate on mixing the inputs.

The production also features a number of sound effects, ranging from birdsong in the park to the crashing noise of the Chromolume breaking down. The entire sound department is trig-gered by a PC, running CSC show control audio playback software, says Frost. Its used on quite a number of shows in the U.K.

According to company literature, CSC is notable

receives SMPTE and MIDI, and, in some of the SMPTE cues, the SMPTE starts so early that, on the front end is a MIDI cue, before the SMPTE takes over. He adds that David Arch did a bril-liant job in programming the lighting.

Billington also notes that the Roundabout was generous in allotting enough tech time to get this complex web of cues working properly. The thing I cant impress enough is, it was total teamwork, he says. He also praises the ac-tors, who endured lengthy tech rehearsals and are required to give extremely precise perfor-mances, hitting their marks exactly every time. Thanks to this collaboration, we got far closer to Ken Billingtons lighting than ever before, says Bird.

The sounds of two centuries Arguably, Sebastian Frost was the designer most affected by the moves from the Menier Chocolate Factory to Wyndhams Theatre to Studio 54. Each time, the new space was larger and more complex. [Frost is a staff member of Orbital Sound, the London-based sound design and rental firm.] Studio 54 was built as an opera house, and the designer praises its acoustics. However, he adds, The room is divided into three distinct spaces. The upstairs mezzanine is large and open. Theres a curve up there that shoots sound straight to the back. The front half of the orchestra is open, but relatively contained; underneath, the overhang from the mezzanine is much lower than youd expect, because of the raised seating in the orchestra. The space also has many hard surfaces, includ-ing wooden floors and seat backs. The room changes an enormous amount with an audience in it; that was very interesting to learn.

As is generally the case with musicals at Studio 54, the band is located in a box position above the orchestra seating. Typically, the musicians are divided in half and put on both sides of the auditorium. Here, because the band numbers only five, theyre all found on the audience-right side. Its not an ideal situation, and it required Frost to create a design that was more spatial and dynamic, he says.

The overall idea of the design is to preserve the

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that isnt for extra audio, but to keep the orches-tra in time with the projections. She triggers the CSC computer, which then generates a signal to the lighting desk and onto the Hog to keep the lighting and video together. In other words, were using the audio system to keep everyone in time, rather than to produce any audio. Its another example of all the departments work-ing together to create a unified effect.

Finishing the hat As you might imagine, many hands were in-volved in the processes described above. Aside from those persons already mentioned, they include Julie Bowles, Sarah Cant, and Ma-chiko Hornbu (Farleys U.K. design assistants); Matthew Pachtman (associate costume de-signer); Cathy Parrott (costumes assistant); Nick Borisjuk (associate sound designer); Dan Hoffman (production carpenter); Josh Weitz-man (production electrician); John Wooding and Dorion Fuchs (spotlight operators); Kathy Fabian (production properties); Rose Howard (assistant production properties); Brad Gyor-gak (production sound engineer); Paul Ashton (automation carpenter); Steve Jones (flyman); Jessica Morton (Obsession programmer); and Larry White (deck sound).

Members of the projection content team include Nina Wilson (team leader), Raf Anzovin for Anzovin Studio (rigging), Ciana Fanning (con-tent librarian), Andy McNamara (3-D animator); Stephen Millingen (character animator); Aaron Trinder (AFX animator). For Putting it Togeth-er, Amy DePrima was visual effects producer and John Chimples, for Image Maintenance, was visual effects videographer. Its their combined efforts that have managed the task of bringing order to the whole of Sunday in the Park with George.

for its modular work space and hands-on ap-proach to constructing shows. Designs are con-structed around real objectswave playback is similar to using CD players, and levels can be changed by the touch of a button. The cue list features a full linking and numbering system, along with an expanded view, which allows all the components of a cue to be visible dur-ing design, or only as a cue description, when the show is being run. Five pages of hot cues allow certain cues to be assigned to live buttons for on-the-fly cue recalls or special effects, with-out affecting the shows running position.

CSC controls the mixing desk and plays back the sound effects, Frost says. For the Chromol-ume sequence, it controls the lights, as well. The sound operator pushes the go command on CSC, which sends MIDI Show Control to lighting and MIDI to LCS. The lighting reacts to the MIDI command for its first cue, and, after that, picks up SMPTE sent from the LCS to the lighting. The MSC cue is necessary, because we cant get a time-code lock with lock with the Obsession fast enough to trigger the first cue,says associ-ate lighting designer Paul Toben. The lighting console then triggers the video.

The productions mics are also unusual: Theyre the Zaxcom 900 Series digital radio micro-phones. (Zaxcom is the New Jersey-based company that develops audio products for the television and film industries.) The first use of them in the theatre was Sunday in the Park with George at Wyndhams Theatre,says Frost. Ive carried them through, because Ive been so im-pressed by their transparency. I was introduced to them by Masque Sound a couple of years ago. Weve modified them to a proper theatre speci-fication. They can be quite difficult, because they have no companding in the transmitter, so the entire audio path comes into the desk. That gives you a much more open sound, but its inherently a better way to go. The transparency of the productions sound is really a combina-tion of those digital microphones; the Tannoys, to a certain extent, and the VRAS, all of which keep the sound as open as possible.

Like the rest of his colleagues, Frost is involved in the challenges of realizing Putting It To-gether. During the number, he says, Caroline Humphris triggers a sequence of click tracks