Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1989 - 38

TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION

The musical extravaganza Les Miserables is a model of microchips in action. When it opened its tour in
Tampa, many of my colleagues at the
University of South Florida made the
trek backstage to witness its many
technological wonders. The AllenBradley Company, noted for its motor
drives and magnetics, designed a custom system to run on a PC and control
the 34-foot steel turntable with absolute precision. The sound system has
36

TD&T·

SUMMER 1989

17 synthesized wireless microphones
and digital cartridges. The prop table
schematics are kept on Macintosh
computers.
By chance, the performance of this
extravagant socio-poli tical romantic
musical in our city coincided with an
avant-garde performance commissioned for the opening of the University of South Florida's new Art
Museum. The piece, enti tied Fluxion,
featured its own exciting interaction
of technology, artist, and audience.
USF's Department of Theatre, like
many others, is a dual-function organ-

ization. It is an academic department
fully involved in teaching and research. It is also a production organization responsible for dramatic
presentations in three theatre buildings and provides design and technical
support for events produced by other
departments in the College of Fine
Arts, including art, music, and dance.
Using the computer and CAD software, we have created an architectural
floorplan of each performance space.
This is the starting point, the blank
canvas on which we create our plan of
production. Figure 1 shows the initial
plan for Fluxion, with the audience in
a traditional proscenium orientation.
The drawback of this configuration
was that it did not offer the opportunity for the spectators to become sufficiently involved in the
experience.
In order to determine the best approach to the technical problem and
find the ideal solution, I met with choreographer Gary Lund and composer
John Mitchell in my office in front of
the computer with the ground plan of
the perforurance space displayed on
the screen. A mouse or digitizer defined and stored shapes representing
the technical elements. We then experimented, simulating the spatial relationship between audience, scenery,
and electronic props, changing locations and adding devices to accommodate the choreography and
engineering involved. Ultimately, we
found the answer in the arrangement
seen in Figure 2, with the audience on
both sides of the performers.
This procedure revolutionized our
method of production planning. Technology pemu tted us to e>..'-plore options
that would be costly, time consuming,
labor intensive, and practically impossible without the modeling capability
of the computer. When the piece was
finally produced, the audience observed a dancer's movement through
laser light, while fog-filled space triggered photocells, motion detectors,
and other transducers which in tum
switched MIDI events on and off.
Of all the myriad forms of theatre,
the experimental piece and the spectacular musical are the most powerful
artistic exploitations of semiconducror capability. In each case, technology
is a nexus of art and production. The
computer is a conspicuous presence
backstage at Les Miserables. In the
avant-garde piece, the computer was
used in the planning process and also
onstage during the performance, vis-

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