Disaster… Anything But That!

Apr 22

In a recent production of DISASTER!, a jukebox musical created by Seth Rudetsky, TCS Theatre Company instilled trust in WiredUP to provide a robust, customized sound system as well as many different types of lighting fixtures.

The plot of DISASTER! follows a group of New Yorkers that attend the opening of a floating casino and discothèque, that quickly succumbs to multiple disasters. These calamities correlate with plots of various disaster films of the 1970s, such as earthquakes or killer bee incidents. Additionally, this play keeps with a 1970s theme by using popular songs of the decade as musical numbers.

Lighting designer Ben Heggarty dealt with many constraints during this production, including two that would directly effect the technical department of the show. One being budget, the other being electrical limitations within the theatre.

To combat both of these limitations, a mixture of both conventional fixtures and LED fixtures were used, and a combination of Leko-style fixtures and Moving Heads were used. Heggarty used WiredUP’s new inventory of ClayPaky Mythos2 moving heads as spot-style fixtures, and a mixture of conventional ETC SourceFour’s and LED SourceFour ColorSource Spot’s to wash the stage.

Where things get weird is the solution for house lights. Heggarty decided to use four Elation Fuze Wash Z120WW fixtures as the house lights, shone on the ceiling to reflect downwards. Thus, resulting in an incredible, cozy house-open feeling.

Sound designer Jennifer Lopresti also faced some challenges in the theatre, including that of a lack of FOH location. It was decided that an iPad-based sound console would be the best option in this case. Utilizing 20 channels of RF microphones routed into a Behringer X32 with S16 stagebox, the goal was accomplished successfully. A small, yet great sounding PA from QSC and JBL was put in place, and was integrated into the set using WiredUP custom fabricated accessories.

See some photos below of the setup and outcome of DISASTER!, produced by TCS Theatre Company, at the Club G Theatre at Sands Point! Thank you Ben and the entire TCS team for trusting WiredUP with your specific production needs!