Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 1998 - 17

Ire Irent to ED!." Thus. the console that opened A Cboms Line
on Broadlray Iras trull' a prototype. Richard \\'inlJer. ~Iusser's
first assistant on the Broadlray production recalls:
I remember being on the headset at one point and Gordon said. "\X·ell. Irhat should Ire call this function T
.-\.nd I said. "Gee. Gordon. I don't knOll'. Irhat does this
function do?" .-\.nd he explained it to me. and I named
it "Load." .-\.nd we did that a couple more times. There
Irere load numbers and memorr numbers on the
original computer. .. \\'e Irere the first people to use a
memol~' bo;u'd on the street. ,-\.nd Ire Irere just all finding
our lI'ay lIith it. .-\.nd that Iras a fascinating process.;
The ne\\'lleSS of computers Iras erident in hOlr records of
the production Irere kept. "When I look back at those original
track sheets, ther Irere not set up the Wal' the screen was set
up," WinlJer remarked. As computer consoles became more
commonplace. assistant designers learned quiclJy to set up a
track sheet to look as much like the monitor screen as possible to facilitate note-taking. Computers hare become so
much more reliable. and offline editor so user-friendly, that
today manr designers do not eren have their assistants keep
paper track sheets.
Record keeping on A Cboms Line became an importam
issue shortly after the shOll' opened. Ten days or so into its
run. the PC boards on the console were "fried" by an accidental jolt of 20S rolts. Reading from WinlJer's papenrork. a
team of people including IIlusser. WinlJer. stage manager Jeff
Hamlin. and electricians Dermot L\llch and Gal~' Chevette ran
the shall' on a preset board back-up. There seemed to be nobody to quiclJv fix the problem, Gordon Pearlman haVing already relllrned to his home in Oregon. Bear in mind that not
only Ivas this the first computer on Broadlva\,. it Ivas the rel~;
first LS-S produced by ED! so there Iras not a readily available
pool of field sen'ice personnel. Gal~' Chevette called on Steve
TerrI' (now executive rice-president of Production Arts lighting) whom he had met lI'hile working with Dance Theatre of
Harlem. and Irho Iras known to have electronics expertise.
Ten~' not only repaired the LS-S but became a substitute electrician on the shall'. and erentually MIS hired to run soundand maintain the LS-S-until 19S2.
That first LS-S. nicknamed "Sam." is currently on displar
at the Boston Computer IIluseum. The display lighting is not
controlled by the LS-S howerer. as the museum did not lI'ant to
hare to maintain the old console in Irorking order, Instead.
another console designed br Gordon Pearlman. a Great
,-\..I11erican Market ",-\.cce s" sits under the LS-S and controls
the lights in the display.
The second L'-S (serial number 2) Iras installed at ,,\CT
in S:U1 Francisco and used br III itch Dana on A His/OJ:)' oj /be
American fifm. Dana made use of the PDP-S computer for
database and papenrork management as Irell as controlling
the lights Irith the LS-S. Dana particularly appreciated the LSS's ability to take inserted "point" cues, IIlanr consoles up to
that time would record onlr Irhole number cues so designers
lI'ould have to number cues 10, 20, ':;0, and so on if thel'
wanted the Oexibilitr to add cues later. Dana recalls:
There were a whole series of things we loved, First of

all. rou could insert point cues. You didn't hare to
IITite cues as I. 5. 10, 15. leal'ing room for inserts.
and then do strange links Irhen you ran out of cues.
That Iras quite a l\'Onderhll feanIre to have. \X'hat Ire
really lored about it Iras for the first time we could
compensate for a filament. If you had a bare Ught bulb
on stage and you lI'ere bumping because somebody
turned the light Slritch on. and rou Imnted the bare
light bulb to be at 50 and all then all other lights Irere
going to be at 50. Ivith the fialment lag, rou got a
double pump. You got the filamem of the light bulb arriring before the light from all the stage lights. and Ire
found ourselres verI' quiclJr writing point cues. lI'here
in a 0 count the filament went to 20 along with all of
the lights that lIere supposedly boosting it, and then
the light bulb had an automatic follOlr in 2/10ths of a
second to take it to the level you wanted it so that el'enlhing arrived at the same time, ...And being able to
do reverse cross-fades-in the early computer boards
you could do a cross-fade, and you could do a pile-on,
pile-out, but you couldn't really do a split fade where
the up time was slower than the dOlI'l1 time. So there
Irere a lot of rariations that were possible, and it impacted our designs immediately. because there were
so many more things you could dO,6
The successhil use of the LS-S on A Cboms Line rendered the piano board obsolete-and the piano board way of
organizing a design along with it. Tharon IIlusser herself has
said, "... you do tend to design for the lighting control you
hare-you have to," - What that often meant
when designing for piano boards Iras designThere was concern,
ing washes of light controlled by large capacity dimmers and various specials controlled
as the transition
by auxiliary boards Irith masters on the main
boards. Because of the use of auxiliary
from manual to
boards, designers could not group lights together in numerical clusters by importance or
electronic control
purpose as they can today On the other hand,
for ease of operation, large groupings of
was taking place,
lights II-ere often all together on one boardall of the baclJight or, more commonly, all of
thatfewer
the lights of a certain hue (all of the blues. or
all of the pinks). Operabilitv was a critical
stagehands would
factor in the design. Designer \eil Peter
Jampolis recalls:
be required to run
You had to think of the look that rou
Iramed. and then do the hookl.lP so that
shows.
the look could be achiered-because if
the electricians couldn't grab the
handles in the right places. you'd never get the look
rou l\'anted. You really had to close your eyes and
imagine the lighted stage. and then l\'Ork backMlrd to
figure out lI'here all those handles were. It Iras a rel~'
physical thing. It Iras almost as phvsical for the designer to work it out. I remember we used to do it on
spreadsheets that were drawn out physically like the
boards in (heir arrangements of dimmers, and then
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 1998