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Clay Paky illuminates ‘Afrikaans is Groot’

Working as Project Manager for ‘Afrikaans is Groot’ (AIG) since its inception four years ago, Denzil Smith from MGG had always hoped that Joshua Cutts would some day step in as lighting designer for this production. A busy schedule with many other shows had prevented Cutts from doing so previously - that is until the client, Coleske Artists, approved his suggestion to involve Christopher Bolton as a joint designer and thus split the load. They could work simultaneously on separate MA2 desks on the same network using 24 universes.

The AIG show was held in Pretoria at Moreleta Church at the end of last year with the Cape Town leg hosted at GrandWest Casino in March 2016. MGG were the main technical suppliers. Lighting had to be spot on for both the live aspect of the show and the DVD recording. The music structure is precise and the lighting was cue extensive, beat for beat on every song, with over 1 600 cues in the show.

Bolton focused on fixing the cues after rehearsals while Cutts made notes from the directors, choreographer and wardrobe, dealing closely with the client. “Content is carefully made for each song,” Smith explains. “The LDs then have to join into that and add all the lighting. With a story line in place, the designers have to match and follow suite without taking over with lighting.”

All programming was done off line via two GrandMA2s. The screen showed where the artists would stand, where a microphone stand might be placed, where the props were located. Bolton and his assistant Jade Manicom built all the props and put them into the 3D Visualiser with items such as street lamps, wooden crates, a bridge, bicycle, the skate ramp or chandeliers. The props filled an 8-ton truck when moving the show to Cape Town.

AIG involves extensive video with LED panels used throughout the set. “Our drive was to carry the video over into lighting. This is not our normal style of lighting because what I usually do is pixel mapping,” says Cutts. “In order to achieve the best pixel mapping, we chose all of the Clay Paky A.Leda B-Eyes K20 and K10 that MGG own and other lights. We spread them out as much as we could across the stage in the ceiling and on the wings of the stage so that we could have an image across the stage at any given time.”

The rig included 20 Clay Paky Alpha Profile 1500 and some Clay Paky Mythos as well. “It was 24 universes of lighting which is bigger than any lighting file I’ve ever worked on,” states Cutts. With the exception of one song the show was fully time coded.

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