Terra Tractus: The Earth Moves Creative Director: Joy Wulke (1948-2014) Managing Directors: Gioia Connell, David Connell LD/Technical Director/Production Manager: Jamie Burnett Director: Tom Burnett Musical Director/Composer: István Péter B’Rácz Video Engineer: Gene McAuife Projection Design: Daniel Fine, Matthew Ragan More cast and crew listings, along with more details about how the rigging challenges of the production were tackled, can be seen in the original Q&A posting at citytheatrical.com laser and music [by composer István Péter B’Rácz]. The laser operator was given parame-ters to follow such as types of shapes, speed, and where to project. These moves were then called live to cover other moves or to accom-modate changes in smoke direction or speed of other transitions to fll. The projection content came about through descriptions in the script. We de-scribed the concept of the content but gave Dan [Fine] and Matt [Ragan] free rein on how to create and execute it. They knew we wanted things fuid and fexible. CTI: What was the most challenging part of the design or installation? JB: Putting fxtures in place on site. For some, we made pipe goalposts. For others, we were able to place on blocks of granite and level with shims. We placed the Elar 108 Pars in the granite piles in the bottom of the quarry, both to act as side light for dancers and to light the tall walls opposite. These were waterproof, thank goodness. Thank goodness also for Google Earth, which seems to update and have better res-olution yearly. I was able to do the entire ground plan on Google Earth photos and scale for cable runs. I scaled up lighting fx-tures so I could actually see them on the plan... [Also], in Connecticut, June is the worst month ever to do an event. Everyone is doing an event. If you don’t have your equipment lined up well in advance, you might not get it. My generator rental had to switch to another company who said they would get it here on a Friday, but then the rains came and the lo-cation where the generator was needed it for their weekend rain date; I didn’t get it till that Monday. We used a smaller rehearsal gener-ator to run the projectors for a week before lighting load-in. Lighting load-in took long enough where I could do without the big generator until Monday anyway. CTI: Were there technologies in this show that you had never dealt with before? JB: I had just set up the new MAC Quantum wash for the LED demo at BLMC the week be-fore, and knew I had to include them in the rig. Being June, I was only able to get fve of them, (or aford fve of them). Glad I did. They were able to cut right through 400 feet across the quarry as my key back light and high side back light. Such a powerful and fexible and amaz-ing light. CTI: There was a great efect that made the water in the quarry lake appear to be mov-ing, as if there was something in the water that was about to erupt. How did you do this? JB: Low-tech efects work best. We used a perforated hose at the end of a pressurized scuba tank for bubbles in the water along with sound, and efects from the MAC 2000 Perfor-mance fxtures. Later, we had water jets shoot-ing across, simply from two sump pumps. CTI: The air currents in the quarry seemed to change from moment to moment. Did this create any challenges for you with pro-jections or lasers? JB: To allow for shifts in air current, I em-ployed two fog machines and a hazer plus an-other fogger at the source of the laser. There were fans behind each, but still currents in the quarry took over. Since I had individual manual control over each fogger I could boost the best one for the situation… We had wanted pyro efects as well, but our pyro tech donation fell through. Another haz-ard of doing events in late June — everyone who does pyro is too busy. If we do another event there, it will be in September for the Equinox. For more on how Terra Tractus’ projection-ists tackled the challenge of filling the quarry with light, go to citytheatrical.com. plsn.com • SEPTEMBER 2014 43
PLSN September 2014: Page 43
