Oklahoma!

Im late with this post but whatever.

Oklahoma opened on Friday and it was incredible. I've worked over 100 hours in the past 2 weeks and it is paying off. Hopefully my teachers will be forgiving of my tardiness and what not.

The play was directed by Ian Atwood. He went to school for theater and has been in several productions. Ian not only directed the musical but he also designed a huge portion of the lighting.

Lighting in our theater consists of 7 parts. House lighting, box booms, front of house, first electric, second electric, third electric and forth electric. However for the production house lights usually are not on. The electrics are on system pipes and are above the stage. The box booms are in the house and are recessed in the walls. The front of house is midway back in the house and runs the width of the house.

Ian creatively combined all of these different aspects and angles with varying intensity and color to beautifully light the deck. Many audience members commented on the lights and lived them! Kudos to Ian and our light board operator and her assistants!

I will add pictures sometime this week!

These pictures are of a mic table with 14 wireless microphones. These are the type of mics actors and actresses wear when on stage. They cost around $110 a piece. The next one is the view of the stage from the house right spot booth and the last is a snapshot of the light board consoles monitor. The picture showcases almost all of the channels on the board. These channels are patched to dimmers, and lights are plugged into these dimmers. That is the simplified explanation of how you can control all the lights from a computer in the back of the auditorium. Which you can actually do from anywhere in the auditorium now.

I figured out ho to enable and manipulate what is called mRFU. It allows me to access the light board from my tablet by way of wireless access point. This means I can control the lights from anywhere within the auditorium. This comes in handy when focusing lights. Instead of having to shout to someone at the light  board you can use a tablet of a phone to bring up the specific light you need.

All in all it was a great opening weekend. Great job Ian!