Funk
it up about’ Nothin is a
hip hop adaptation of Shakespeares Much
Ado About Nothing. It was
created and directed by the Q brothers and originally produced by
Chicago Shakespeare Theatre in 2008.
Beatrice (Ericka Ratcliff) in the spotlight
In 2011
it came back for a return season in Chicago followed by an east coast
tour of Australia and a season in London. This was a joint effort
between Chicago Shakespeare Theatre (USA), Merrigong Theatre Co (AUS)
and Richard Jordan Productions (UK). I was brought on board to create
a new lighting design as well as manage the Australian tour.
Funk it
up is my first international design and I’m proud to say it looked
fantastic.
The people involved:
Created and Directed by the Q brothers
With:
Jillian Burfette
Jackson Doran
Postell Pringle
GQ
JQ
Ericka Ratcliff
DJ Adrienne Sanchez
Creative Producer: Rick Boynton
Australian Producer: Simon Hinton
UK Producer: Richard Jordan
Set Designer: Brian Sidney Bembridge
Costume Designer: Debbie Baer
US/UK Production Manager: Chris Plevin
AUS Production Manager: Daniel Potter
Company Manager: Daniel Hess
Company Manager: Greta Honold
Stage Manager: Angi Adams
US/UK Audio Engineer: Vince McClelland
AUS Audio Engineer: Allan Doyle
Chicago
Chicago is a beautiful city. If you’ve just stepped out of the Australian summer and into the Chicago winter it is also a ridiculously cold city. If you are planning to head over there you will probably need to wear pants.
Built in the shell of a carpark.
Can you imagine the outcry in Australia if someone sacrificed
parking spaces for a theatre?
The theatre itself is located on Navy Pier, which is a huge tourist destination in the midwest. It sticks out from the centre of the city into lake Michigan. It’s sort of like a cross between Luna park, the Horden pavillion and a shopping mall. It’s great to see a Shakespare theatre positioned as an attraction, rather than some kind of exclusive ‘high art’ experience.. It’s fitting as Funk it Up itself is a cross cultural experience.
I’ve got to thank all the people at Chicago Shakes for their amazing hospitality and warmth. I soon forgot about the cold. It’s a generalisation of course but Americans have a real culture of being friendly and generous to their guests. Thanks Americans!
The brief for the lighting design was Old School. Old school for me means a couple of things: Bold colour and thick beams in the air. I spoke to Daniel Potter (Merrigongs Production Manager) about getting hold of some ACLs (Sort of like narrow beam parcans) as well as some ultraviolet fixtures. I made some other decisions at this point: The set was quite heavily textured already and so I decided to go without gobos. We had some other effects up our sleeve including festoons, lightboxes within the set, a mirrorball, a strobe and a particular light that became known as ‘the discotoy’ so I didn’t need gobos as a look. Lastly we would have a cyclorama. Despite it reducing the room the actors had backstage we decided on using groundrows as well as flown cyc units so we could do split colour on the cyc from the top and bottom.
Don Pedro (Postell Pringle) and Claudio (Jackson Doran)
Originally I designed a cool/warm 10 way FOH wash. 5 along the bottom and 5 along the top. Cool was Lee 202 and warm was Rosco 02. The set made it difficult to use booms but I’m a sucker for sidelight so I put in some highsides coming off the grid with the same warm but a stronger cool, R02 and L201 respectively. These would also be useful for getting into some of the doorway shapes. Overhead I designed a 6 way top wash in a fairly dramatic warm and cool. L134 and L200. These would also be used for isolated moments.
Big Jon (Ericka Ratcliffe) and Little Boi (Jillian Burfette)
The next element was a wash for the set. This was to be an amber and a purple, L205 and L180. The L205 shot was from profiles (more typically known as Lekos or ellipsoidals in the US) and shuttered down to the shape of the set. This way I could add a bit of warmth as required areas without spoilin
g the tone of the set. The L180 shot was done with a parcan from as high an angle as possible so it would cast some shadows. These were used for kind of hyperreal day and night looks.
The Judge (Jackson Doran). You do remember there’s a judge in Much Ado right?
Backlight was where it started to get more fun. Six profiles shot back through and served two purposes – isolated backlight for some of the musical moments, but also their own fan type beam look when all on together. The colour was 2 cuts of L704 in the one frame, a combination I discovered makes a kind of electric purple, although overall intensity isn’t ideal.
Hero (Jillian Burfette)
The cyc lighting was both groundrows and hanging cycs as detailed above. Colours were R22 (nearly an Orange, not quite) R58 (“Deep Lavender”. Looks to me like purple plus a bit of sky blue) and R80 (Primary blue, relatively dark). Individually each was fairly dramatic, combined together I could achieve more natural looks, evoking sunsets and similar in a hyperreal fashion.
Leonato (GQ)
The main set electrics was ropelight behind perspex panels. It was coiled onto a timber pannel which was then fixed a set distance from the back of the perspex. If it was too close it would be patchy, too far and not bright enough. In Chicago we used older style incandescent ropelight. It gave a warmer look but wasn’t quite bright enough. We ended up using aluminium foil as a reflector behind to get the most out of it. Each ropelight/perspex unit was walled in with aluminium foil to prevent spill reflected from the back of the perspex becoming an issue.
The crew rigging under worklights. You can see the set came all the way to the grid.
The other significant set electrics was a string of festoons above. In America they don’t have the word ‘festoon’ and (in Chicago at least) they called them Italian lights. It was actually three strings of light bulbs woven together. Brian chose three different bulbs and specified that of the three circuits would be coloured. A great effect was dimming down the cyc a little and bringing up the clear festoons to about 20%. If you did this over 5 or 6 minutes it would give the impression of nightfall. What I didn’t expect was how good the coloured bulbs would look and I ended up that channel on it’s own as part of several looks.
View from the foyer after our first tech rehearsal
In the next article I’ll talk about the Australian leg of the tour.