Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 2011 - 63

them quickly in the twenty-four hours between
the rehearsal and the performance. I wanted
to bring a variety of textures and colors to the
hall, but we did not have the time or the positions to hang multiple gobo and color washes.
Essentially, I wanted my design to embody the
romanticism of baseball, moment after moment,
while using as little equipment as possible.
My final light plot for The Baseball Music
Project included traditional theatrical PAR cans,
some LED color wash fixtures, two digital projectors, and a dozen ten-inch beam projectors.
The ancient beam projectors were arranged in a
simple tree formation to simulate stadium lights.
The ambience they provided simply couldn't be
matched by any digital technologies. I usually
left the beam projectors at just a glow, but as the
orchestra played selections from the film score
for The Natural, their intensity swelled to full
with the music. I couldn't make them explode
and shower sparks, as they do in the film, but
the effect was nearly as dramatic.

slides, changing nearly half of the content in
the two days of residency.
Towards the end of The Baseball Music
Project, I was struck by the fact that every
show I designed in 2010 made use of multiple
technologies that were not readily available
to lighting designers several years ago. Yet
similarly, in each instance, I used of fixtures
and techniques that have existed for decades.
I drew on my knowledge of the overlapping
fields of architectural consulting and projection design, and yet retained the simple title

and role of lighting designer. Perhaps, as
the colloquial saying goes, the more things
change, the more they stay the same. v
David K. Warfel is a freelance lighting
designer and chair of lighting design
at the University of Illinois, UrbanaChampaign. He is a member of USITT and
IES and an associate member of AIA.

...I was struck by the fact
that every show I designed in
2010 made use of multiple
technologies that were not
readily available to lighting
designers several years ago.
Color washes over the orchestra were
achieved with sixteen PAR64 luminaires with
scrollers and twenty Philips/ColorKinetics
ColorBlast 12 fixtures. I keyed off the images
provided by Boom Design Group, and the LED
fixtures allowed smooth transitions between
songs and narration. The LEDs were also
nearly silent in the acoustically brilliant concert hall.
The two 6,000-lumen Eiki LCD projectors
were controlled by a Dataton Watchout system.
I projected simple still images, masked to the
white balcony boxes, to provide various textures for different numbers. Images included
my own photography and new Photoshop
graphics that were coordinated with the LEDs
and the color wash on the orchestra. The Watchout system essentially delivered the digital
equivalent of custom glass patterns, or gobos,
and it allowed me to quickly customize the

summer 2011

theatre design

& technology

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