Bringing Order to the Whole

Theatre technology finally catches up

with Sunday in the Park with George
By: David Barbour
Photography: Joan Marcus

Reprinted with permission from Lighting&Sound America, April 2008. www.lightingandsoundamerica.com

Some shows are ahead of their time because

of their content, and others because of the
technical demands they pose. When Stephen
Sondheim and James Lapines Sunday in the
Park with George opened in 1984, it managed to
divide nearly everyone with its original subject matter and style, while running over 600
performances and nabbing a Pulitzer Prize. It
represents an extreme iteration of the so-called
concept musical, in which a single governing idea predominates, as opposed to plot and
characters.

Act I centers on a fictionalized version of the

French Impressionist painter Georges Seurat
as he labors on his masterpiece, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte (1884-86).
In Lapines libretto, many of the figures in the
painting become persons who are connected
to George (as he is known in the show). Chief
among them is Dot, his mistress and model, a
practical-minded woman who feels shut out
by Georges feverish devotion to his work.
(Georges painting technique, in which an image
is created out of thousands of dots of color that
the eye arranges into a pattern, is dismissed by
his colleagues as aberrant.)

Infuriated by Georges neglect, and pregnant

with his child, Dot leaves him for Louis, a baker,
and moves to America. George is devastated, but
keeps working, using his sketches to create a
painting that will be universally acknowledged
as a masterpiece.

Act II takes place a century later, and focuses

on another artist named George; he is his
namesakes great-grandson by Dot. George has
invented his own medium, a color-and-light machine called the Chromolume (Its an allusion to
Seurats color theory, Chromoluminarism. If the
first George is so obsessed with his vision that
he alienates those who love him, his descen-

dant is spiritually depleted by the demands of

constant networking with critics, curators, and
patrons.) At the urging of Marie, his grandmother (and Dots daughter), George travels to La
Grande Jatte. There, in a strange turn of events
that reaches across time, he meets Dot, who offers a healing benediction.
The original Broadway production was hailed
as a design triumph. Tony Straiges setting provided a kind of stereoscopic vision of Seurats
painting, with actors placed against a series of
flat objects located on different planes. Richard
Nelsons gorgeously dappled lighting completed
the image; both of them took Tony Awards for
their efforts. (The production also featured
costumes by Patricia Zipprodt and Ann HouldWard and sound by Tom Morse.) In retrospect,
however, their work remained rooted in the
world of tactile, dimensional materials.

The Broadway revival, which comes to Roundabout Theatres Studio 54 from Londons Menier Chocolate Factory via a hit West End run,
makes use of the most up-to-date capabilities
of projection technology to give us a view of the
first Georges creative mind at work. It must
have been a natural approach for the director, Sam Buntrock, who, earlier in his career,
was an animation director for many television
shows. To realize this projection-driven production, he has engaged Timothy Bird and his
firm, Knifedge: The Creative Network; using
the whole of David Farleys atelier setting as a
canvas, Bird and his colleagues have designed
enormous images that are continually subject to
revision and undergo dramatic shifts of perspective. This technique is made apparent at
the top of show, when Daniel Evans, who plays
both Georges, says the first words of the script:
White, a blank page or canvas. The challenge:
Bring order to the whole through design, com-

Sunday in the Park with George

Page 1

position, balance, light, and harmony. As he

speaks, an invisible hand moves over the set,
filling it with pencil scratches until it arrives at
a black-and-white sketch of La Grande Jatte. Its
an extraordinary moment.

This design concept had implications for everyone on the creative team, including Farley, lighting designer Ken Billington, and sound designer
Sebastian Frost. All worked in an unusually
intertwined collaboration. Theatre design and
technology, it would seem, has finally caught up
with Lapine and Sondheims vision.

The stage as canvas

Conceptually speaking, I call Tim Bird my codesigner, says David Farley. We worked very
closely on developing the look of the show. The
design, he adds, is rooted in the concept that
we are in Georges studio, and he takes us to
the park as he works. For me, it was so key to
integrate the projections with the performers,
to make it their world.

Entering the theatre, one sees the studio. (There

is no show curtain.) Its a large room, designed
in the Empire style, with cream-colored walls.
There are enormous double doors at left and
right, with additional single doors further upstage. There is a large swag of cream-colored
drapes at upstage center. Its a grand, open
space, yet the plaster is cracked in several
places. Downstage right, at the proscenium, one
sees a table and two shelves containing painters gear (brushes, frames, and bottles of various colors). On the opposite side is Dots vanity
table, with pieces of cheap jewelry hanging on
the wall. The stage is raked.

The idea of the studio as the base setting is important, says Farley, as it allows for projections
onto real surfacesthese walls, with all their
architectural details. Its a way of giving the images a kind of tangibility. (The upstage wall is
made of RP screen; the left and right walls are
functional scenic pieces, however, and are built
as such.) As the show begins and we are transferred to La Grand Jatte, the first large-scale
projectionthe black-and-white sketch of the
islandforms a panorama that covers all three
walls of the set. Later, as Georges work on the

painting progresses, the image will take on the

colors of the finished painting. There are many
imaginative details: The upstage swag parts in
two and become a pair of trees, their transformation aided by projections. Later, during the
number The Day Off, a pair of dogs appear,
each in a little picture frame placed downstage.

The concept of projecting, say, a tree-shaped image on a tree-shaped surface was inspired, Farley says, by the visual artist Tony Oursler: Hes
made an installation of rag dolls sitting in the
corner of a gallery, with images of babies crying
or talking projected onto the faces of the dolls.
The use of such objects as projection screens, he
adds, is central to the shows concept, as it allows George to arrange anything onstage, in the
manner of an artist creating a still life; the stage
is his canvas. This is seen clearly in the first-act
finale, when George arranges the actors into a
tableau of Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La
Grande Jatte.
Its an idea thats central to many non-projection effects, as well, says Farley: Its how we
present The Bathers, as an image that becomes
a painting in the gallery. Hes referring to the
scene that deals with the creation of Seurats
Bathers at Asnires; a wagon rolls onstage with
young men in swimsuits on a riverbank; a frame
flies in front of the wagon, turning it into a work
of art. This segues into the number No Life, in
which Jules, Georges colleague, and his wife,
Yvonne, belittle Georges work.
As in the case of the Bathers wagon, the very
few additional set pieces travel on and off, from
one set of double doors through the other, via a
slipstage. Farley says it was a solution devised
for the Menier Chocolate Factory, where we
had no flies, but lots of wing space. We had the
same technique in the West End. Now, at Studio
54, we have no wing space at all! The slipstage
system has become an incredibly complicated
piece of engineering.
Because theres insufficient space offstage left,
the track turns vertical and runs up the wall,
says Rick Mone, project manager for Hudson
Scenic Studio, which built, painted, and automated the scenery. The solution isnt as simple
as it looks, he adds. Its a raked deck, so, to
allow the vertical track to rise plumb, the hinge

Sunday in the Park with George

Page 2

geometry between slipstage sections is like an

automobile door. The pivot axis is not parallel
to the plane of the slipstage. If, for example, we
had used a simple piano hinge between each
section, when it turned vertical it would rise
perpendicular to the raked show deck, complicating the track and causing the vertical slipstage to lean downstage at the angle of the rake.
We made hinges that get the hinge axes aligned
with the house deck, not the raked show deck,
and allow the pieces to clear each other as they
fold. They were designed by Roger Bardwell,
our chief engineer.

Most of Act II is set in a gallery, where the second George debuts his new work, before moving to the modern version of La Grande Jatte for
the finale. The same basic studio set becomes
the gallery. There are so many galleries these
daysthere are quite a few in Londonthat
are fabulous old period buildings that have
been whitewashed to look modern, says Farley.
So why not make it an old town house in New
York thats been converted into a cool gallery?
During the intermission, the details that made
it George and Dots space are removed, and the
patched plaster is replaced with pristine panels.
The decision to keep the same basic environment helps provide a visual link between the
two acts. Farley adds that he took the same
approach in designing the costumes, trying to
link little bits of detail in each act. For example,
the actress Stacie Morgan Lewis, who plays a
comically adulterous cook in Act I, wears the
same boots in Act II, when she appears as an
artist at Georges opening. Its a canny choice
for a musical that has often been criticized for
being two shows connected by a single theme,
rather than a single cohesive work.

Projecting the park

Timothy Bird is creative director of Knifedge:

The Creative Network, a U.K.-based firm that
provides marketing and branding services in
the business sector, as well as music, video,
and animations for cultural and entertainment projects. In a way, he worked as a kind
of creative director for the productions visual
aspect, integrating animated video content with
Farleys scenery and Billingtons lighting. Its

an approach that required intensive preparation; Farley says that he and Bird worked with
a detailed set of storyboards to plan each moment. Tim and I photographed the set model
with all the scene setupsand then, using a lot
of the still imagery for the parks, photoshopped
the images in, to see what it would look like. We
then presented it to Sam [Buntrock] and Ken
Billington, discussing what we were hoping to
achieve. It should be noted here that Studio
54, which seats about 1,000, is a much bigger
space than the Menier Chocolate Factory which
seats less than 200, or Wyndhams Theatre in
the West End, which accommodates about 700.
Given this difference and the fact that Ken Billington joined the team for New York, the designers essentially started over.

If the projections are enormous, they also feature various kinds of movement. Look closely
at the panorama of La Grande Jatte, and youll
see a boat sailing by, or one person or another
entering or leaving the picture. At one point,
during the number Sunday, when a lyric references Dots parasol, the screen is briefly filled
with such objects. The dogs that appear in The
Day Off frolic inside their canvases. When Dot
sings the title tune, a aria of complaint about
her relationship with George, while posing for
him, her shadow grows to several times its
normal height; this cues a freeze-frame moment
onstage, signaling to the audience that were
hearing Dots inner thoughts. There are tracking shots, including one on the upstage wall of
the Act II gallery set that moves us from one
room to another, where Sunday Afternoon on the
Island of La Grand Jatte is hung; Farley says it is
inspired by a similar tracking shot in the Woody
Allen film Manhattan.

In a way, Bird deconstructs the painting, presenting it in various states of progress. The
brief from Sam Buntrock was to look at Seurats
studies and sketches, he says. In particular, we
wanted to find a way of bringing the look of his
cont [drawing] work alive onstage. We started
by recreating the geometry of the park in a
virtual 3-D space.The projection programmer,
Sam Hopkins, used the previsualization project
ESPVision, to do this; the company implemented aspect ratio as a feature for us, so we could
correctly pre-author the content, says Hopkins.

Sunday in the Park with George

Page 3

Everythingthe water level, the bankwas

modeled in a virtual landscape,says Bird. In
particular, we knew we needed to be deft with
the black-and-white sketch seen early in the
show, because it tracks for the scene with the
bathers. When they appear, the slipstage moves
them from stage right to stage left, and the
imagery moves with it. Its not simply a picture
that we slide along; its an actual 3-D environment moving across to create the illusion of parallax, as you would get in, say, a moving train.
Bird says his team from Knifedge, including
Shaun Freeman, who worked as a senior animator on the feature film Happy Feet, added bits
of character movement to the visuals. He notes
that Buntrock got into the game, too, exercising
his animation skills. Not everything made it into
the final version, however. We were brutal with
each other, says Farley. Many things were nice,
but they didnt help to tell the story.

There are other perceptual shifts within the

imagery. In Act I, Dot sings Everybody Loves
Louis, in which she tries to convince herself
that shes making the right romantic choice; as
the music begins, the projections shift to a purple-magenta look. The number becomes more
introspective, and the color drains out of the images, suggesting that Dot may be fooling herself.
As she sings the lyrics We choose things/And
then we lose things, the color drains away, as
the center of hope disappears, says Bird. Other
details, such as a pair of windows in Georges
studio, are projected with such subtlety that
they appear to be actual set pieces. color drains
away, as the center of hope disappears, says
Bird. Other details, such as a pair of windows in
Georges studio, are projected with such subtlety that they appear to be actual set pieces.

Many images are front-projected, an astounding achievement, as one never sees distracting
shadows or video images on the actors bodies. Hopkins used ESPVision to see where the
projectors would go and the adjustments we
needed to make, says Bird. In New York, adds
Hopkins, we mounted the projectors on the advance truss, rather than the [balcony rail]; this
gave us a much higher angle to get at them
hence the very useful network control, where
[thanks to a wireless router] Icould adjust the
projectors from my laptop wirelessly from the

house.

Its a very steep angle, agrees Bird. In essence, we come in over the actors heads. This
approach required intensive keystone correction for each image, some of which was worked
out in advance by Hopkins and the content
team, and some of which is accomplished using
the Catalyst software in the media servers. The
system consists of three dual-head Catalysts
driving five Barco CLMR10+ projectors and one
SLM R12 unit.

The video is controlled by a High End Systems

Wholehog III console, which is linked to the
lighting control system. Hopkins notes that, because the New York production included several
gear upgrades, we totally reprogrammed from
scratch. Projection gear was supplied by XL
Video.
As accomplished as the Act I visuals are, Bird
and company achieve two critical effects in Act
II. In some ways, the most challenging task is
the realization of the second Georges art work,
Chromolume #7. In any production of Sunday in
the Park with George, the design team faces the
almost impossible task of creating an aesthetic
for the second George; it must be a convincingly
avant-garde piece of work, which establishes
him as an artist in his own right. Here, it is a
dazzling, room-filling display of primary colors
presented in abstract arrangements of dots
and lines; in its deployment of red, green, and
blue dots, it provides a link to the first Georges
Pointilistic style. It was relatively complicated
to do, says Bird, because weve created a virtual gallery space, with a trompe loeil effect
and then we apply light effects to that. Its a
projection on top of a projection, if you will,
with matching lighting effects that extend the
image into the auditorium.
This is followed by the number Putting it Together, in which George, at a gallery reception,
describes how he keeps his career going. The
number calls for multiple representations of
George, which are done with projections; at one
point, there are four virtual Georges onstage
in addition to the real George. The real George
even pours champagne into a cup held by his
virtual double.
It took a lot of head-scratching to make it

Sunday in the Park with George

Page 4

work, says Bird, adding that the sequence

involved virtually every member of the creative
team. The order of play was something like
this: Sam Buntrock and Christopher Gattelli
[who staged the musical numbers] worked
closely with Daniel Evans in the rehearsal studio, working out the particular bits of action.
Chris wrote a movement script, listing what all
of the doppelgangers would do, and then Caroline Humphris [the musical supervisor] set the
musical tempo and recorded a click track.

I came in and worked out what they were doing, how it would affect the cue structure, and
what we needed to shoot. Its a feature of this
show that at no point can you cut, like you do
in a film; it all has to work seamlessly, from one
clip to the next. You have to shoot it all in one
go. That required planning. Using the clicktrack, Daniel rehearsed it to within an inch of
his life. Then we went to a studio, and had a director of photography light it, with Ken Billington there to make sure that the lighting of the
virtual performer would match the lighting of
the people onstage. We shot it all with a green
screen, to be able to cut out, or key, the performer. At this point, my role stopped being that of a
designer and became more like a first assistant
director on a film shootI was the person who
understood the crossover between the theatre
team and the film team. For example, the film
crew might want to reposition the camera, but
you cant do that. You have to lock it off.
After it was shot and Sam chose the takes he
wanted to use, we took the footage and keyed
out Daniels background, rendering the final
clips with an Alpha channel. This allowed us to
use a series of layers in the media server, which
allowed us to drop in a cutout of Daniel wherever we needed him in the set. And there you
are, really. He adds that theres a version of the
sequence shot with Evans understudy, should
he need to go on, and another, more generic,
shadow-play version. On the whole, we like
it for Daniel not to get sick, he adds wryly. It
wouldnt work so well without his metronomic
precision; he is uniquely capable of working to
this level of detail, with this slightly terrifying
projection machine.

The show ends at the 1984 version of La Grande

Jatte, a photo projection in which we see how

the former country retreat has become an urban landscape. Bird, who has never visited the
place, says the image was derived from a series
of photographs taken by Buntrock. Its not a
literal reproduction; the details have been composited together to suit the needs of the show.
Its a matte painting, executed by Alex Laurant,
who is now back working for Industrial Light
and Magic, says Bird. He was one of the concept artists who worked on [the Brendan Fraser
film] The Mummy. We were very fortunate that
he lived next to Sam Buntrock at the time of the
first staging of Sunday.
The thing I was most pleased with, visually, is
the extent to which we were able to get Seurats
drawing style, adds Bird. This is a combination of me and John Keates, an original member
of our animation team. Hes a painter by background, and a very scientific mind. Its quite
possibly the most vivid account of an artists
process ever to be seen onstage.

Color and light

Ken Billington admits that it was a daunting

task to light a stage that is, in effect, a projection screen. However, he adds, I wasnt scared
by it. Maybe it comes from having done a lot of
shows with projections over the years. And he
was very clear about his intentions: When I
went into my first meeting, I said, The name of
the show is Sunday in the Park with Georgenot
Sun-night. This show is not going to be dark. In
many shows, when the projections come on, the
lighting is compromised; sometimes, during a
production number, I want to say, Can we just
turn on the lights? I didnt want that to happen
here. Fortunately, they agreed. He adds that the
Barco projectors are so bright (the CLMs are
10,000 lumens and the SLM is 12,000)that he
doesnt have to soft-pedal the lighting; this is
probably why the enormous projections dont
overwhelm the people onstage.
Its been great working with Ken and his team,
says Bird, looking at how to fuse together what
were doing with projected light and what hes
doing with, well, projected light. You know,
theres very little difference between what a
projector does and what a lighting fixture does.

Sunday in the Park with George

Page 5

Billington traveled to London and met with

Bird, Farley, and their colleagues, discussing
his lighting ideas in unusually detailed fashion.
We talked about angles, color shifts, breakups,
everything, he says. We spent five days going
through the show moment by moment, using
the storyboards. [Farley notes that he and Bil-

lington also worked to coordinate the color palettes of the costumes and lighting.] We were in
the Knifedge studio, so we used their computergenerated program. They totally accepted me as
part of the team. Nobody said, Heres the show;
you light it. We really worked on it together.
After that, I went home and designed the light
plot.

One big challenge for

Billington was the lack
of available positions.
I only had a couple
of electrics overhead,
he says, adding that
the Act I finale is particularly challenging,
because it doesnt allow
for any sidelight. His
plot consists largely
of approximately 230
ETC Source Fours, plus
15 Vari*Lite VL3550Qs
and four VL1000s. The
3500s were chosen for
their shutters, allowing the designer to get
precise looks that keep
light off the walls. The
VL1000s are used to
extend the look of the
Chromolume into the
auditorium. (The lighting gear was supplied
by PRG.) Theres also a
pair of Lycian 2K followspots, again used in the
subtlest possible manner, to not distract from
the overall stage picture
Theyre truly pinspots,
just head and shoulders, says the designer.
Actors walk upstage,
but you never see the
light on the RP screen,
because the spots fade
as they move upstage.
The followspot operators are brilliant.
Filling out the lighting

Sunday in the Park with George

Page 6

rig are ten MR16s, 14 PAR 64s, one Arri 1.5K

HMIFresnel, four Altman 5K Fresnels, three
City Theatrical AutoYokes, one Look Solutions
Tiny Fogger, eight High End Systems Dataflash
AF1000 strobes, two City Theatrical wireless
dimmers, 86 Wybron Coloram scrollers, and
one Wybron Eclipse.

Many of what appear to be video effects are,

in fact, realized in conjunction with the lighting. The moment with Dots shadow in the
title tune begins as an actual shadow made by
the lighting, then the projectors take over. The
color-drain effect in Everybody Loves Louis is
a similar case: I match it with the lighting, says
Billington. Over 40 counts, it goes from normal
color to magenta-purple to black and white,
then snaps back to the magenta. Thats something you couldnt have done only a few years
ago.

The lighting works intimately with the projections in less obvious ways, as well. Billington
cites the gallery scenes, with the tracking shot
that leads to a room where Sunday Afternoon
on the Island of La Grande Jatte is on display.
The projections change with every light cue,
so the image matches the walls onstage. We
went through everything; Sam Hopkins would
warm up an image or Id change something. It
was fun to do. In the early Grand Jatte scenes,
to match the black and white images, Billington
says, the lighting is truly all Lee 203. When the
projections shift to color, in comes GAM 155
[Light Pink]. Also, the gobos change. We get to
the proper Pointilist gobos at the end of the first
act; before that, we have a very streaky gobo
look. We use many, many gobos [from GAM,
Inline, and Apollo], a lot of them custom-made.
For example, theres a Chromolume gobo based
on their artwork; the lighting extends the Chromolume effect into the auditorium. I sent them
all the gobos I was using and they worked them
into the video.

Indeed, Bird says, the collaboration between

lighting and projections was achieved through
a series of painstaking and often minute adjustments. He cites the studio scene, in which
George and Dot sing Color and Light. Evans
is upstage center, standing behind a scrim on
which is projected an unfinished version of
La Grande Jatte. Jenna Russell, who plays Dot,

is downstage left, getting dressed for a night

at the music hall. In addition to the projection of the painting, theres also a projection of
windows on the upstage wall. There are little
movements of light, changing intensity between
George and Dot, with Ken deftly tweaking the
lighting, says Bird. Theres ambient bounce
light hitting the floor and walls. The floor is
brown; when certain colors hit it, it affects the
walls more than youd imagine. Were matching
the colors as close as we can; the net result is,
you forget the windows are projections. Thats
the result of Sam Hopkins sitting there, waiting as Ken plotted the lights; every time he relit
something, Sam worked with his console, putting in a little magenta by .25%, dropping the
intensity by 5%so you have maybe 50 cues
running through the scene, none of which the
audience sees.
As mentioned, Billington was on hand for the
shooting of the video effects for Putting It
Together, although the task was still difficult,
he notes, because it was shot before we lit
the show. However, he adds, I knew it would
be about sidelight. In more than one of the
numbers effects, a door opens and becomes
a screen for one of the virtual Georges. From
the audience, it appears that Daniel Evans is
standing next to his projected image; in fact,
hes standing about a foot upstage of the door,
so Billington can hit him with sidelight. Theres
a similar effect in Act I, when a soldier appears
with his colleague and best friend, who is a
video image. There are mirrors on the back
of the proscenium, so the actors can watch the
video and interact with the images, he adds.

The lighting is controlled by an ETC Obsession

II console, linked to a PRG Virtuoso, which handles the moving lights, as well as to the Hog III
for the projections. There are 280 cues, which
is a lot for a simple musical, says Billington. If I
dont have a light cue, it may be a video cue, or it
may have a delay built into it, so the lighting and
video match. Its all run by one man. We talked
about this at great lengththe type of consoles,
how it would all be triggered. We have SMPTE
for the Chromolume sequence. Theres a click
track to link the video to the music in Putting it
Together. The click track sends a MIDI signal to
the console to run the light cues. The Obsession

Sunday in the Park with George

Page 7

receives SMPTE and MIDI, and, in some of the

SMPTE cues, the SMPTE starts so early that, on
the front end is a MIDI cue, before the SMPTE
takes over. He adds that David Arch did a brilliant job in programming the lighting.

Billington also notes that the Roundabout was

generous in allotting enough tech time to get
this complex web of cues working properly.
The thing I cant impress enough is, it was total
teamwork, he says. He also praises the actors, who endured lengthy tech rehearsals and
are required to give extremely precise performances, hitting their marks exactly every time.
Thanks to this collaboration, we got far closer
to Ken Billingtons lighting than ever before,
says Bird.

The sounds of two centuries

Arguably, Sebastian Frost was the designer

most affected by the moves from the Menier
Chocolate Factory to Wyndhams Theatre to
Studio 54. Each time, the new space was larger
and more complex. [Frost is a staff member of
Orbital Sound, the London-based sound design
and rental firm.] Studio 54 was built as an opera
house, and the designer praises its acoustics.
However, he adds, The room is divided into
three distinct spaces. The upstairs mezzanine
is large and open. Theres a curve up there that
shoots sound straight to the back. The front
half of the orchestra is open, but relatively
contained; underneath, the overhang from the
mezzanine is much lower than youd expect,
because of the raised seating in the orchestra.
The space also has many hard surfaces, including wooden floors and seat backs. The room
changes an enormous amount with an audience
in it; that was very interesting to learn.
As is generally the case with musicals at Studio
54, the band is located in a box position above
the orchestra seating. Typically, the musicians
are divided in half and put on both sides of the
auditorium. Here, because the band numbers
only five, theyre all found on the audience-right
side. Its not an ideal situation, and it required
Frost to create a design that was more spatial
and dynamic, he says.

The overall idea of the design is to preserve the

shows essentially intimate nature while providing room to open up for big moments like
Sunday, with its majestic choral singing, and
Putting It Together, which builds to a dramatic
climax. To this end, Frosts rig is built for both
eventualities. The loudspeaker system consists
of a mixture of Meyer Sound UPA boxes for the
orchestra and Tannoy T3836 units, with open
drivers for the vocals. We needed to get some
width into the system, he says about the Tannoy gear. Its a very open and natural-sounding
box. Obviously, we also have a fairly heavy use
of the UPAs in the center cluster for the vocals.
He adds that the latter is slightly more separated than a cluster would usually be, to get a
general sound off of the proscenium. There are
additional UPAs in the mezzanine for delay and
a set of EAW JF80s for orchestra delay.

In addition, he says, The set is much wider than

what weve had before; it collects the sound
from the auditorium onto the stage, which
makes it hard for the performers to hear each
other. Weve added some light vocal foldback,
with four [EAW] JF60s over the stage.
To unite these zones and create a seamless
sound, Frost uses a VRAS (Variable Room
Acoustic) system, a processing product from
LCS/Meyer Sound. We have 14 microphones
around the auditorium, which feed the VRAS;
it works through various reverberations and
early reflection algorithims to apparently
change the acoustics, based on where youre
sitting. The system handles most of the sound
processing, he says, For example, there are no
reverb units on the vocals; its all done by the
VRAS. In Act II, when George makes the presentation of his work, the system mimics the hard
acoustics of a picture gallery. The LCS units do
all the processing and matrixing of the system.
It allows the Yamaha PM5D console to concentrate on mixing the inputs.

The production also features a number of sound

effects, ranging from birdsong in the park to
the crashing noise of the Chromolume breaking
down. The entire sound department is triggered by a PC, running CSC show control audio
playback software, says Frost. Its used on
quite a number of shows in the U.K.
According to company literature, CSC is notable

Sunday in the Park with George

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for its modular work space and hands-on approach to constructing shows. Designs are constructed around real objectswave playback
is similar to using CD players, and levels can be
changed by the touch of a button. The cue list
features a full linking and numbering system,
along with an expanded view, which allows
all the components of a cue to be visible during design, or only as a cue description, when
the show is being run. Five pages of hot cues
allow certain cues to be assigned to live buttons
for on-the-fly cue recalls or special effects, without affecting the shows running position.

CSC controls the mixing desk and plays back

the sound effects, Frost says. For the Chromolume sequence, it controls the lights, as well. The
sound operator pushes the go command on
CSC, which sends MIDIShow Control to lighting
and MIDI to LCS. The lighting reacts to the MIDI
command for its first cue, and, after that, picks
up SMPTE sent from the LCS to the lighting.
The MSC cue is necessary, because we cant get
a time-code lock with lock with the Obsession
fast enough to trigger the first cue,says associate lighting designer Paul Toben. The lighting
console then triggers the video.

The productions mics are also unusual: Theyre

the Zaxcom 900 Series digital radio microphones. (Zaxcom is the New Jersey-based
company that develops audio products for the
television and film industries.) The first use of
them in the theatre was Sunday in the Park with
George at Wyndhams Theatre,says Frost. Ive
carried them through, because Ive been so impressed by their transparency. I was introduced
to them by Masque Sound a couple of years ago.
Weve modified them to a proper theatre specification. They can be quite difficult, because
they have no companding in the transmitter,
so the entire audio path comes into the desk.
That gives you a much more open sound, but its
inherently a better way to go. The transparency
of the productions sound is really a combination of those digital microphones; the Tannoys,
to a certain extent, and the VRAS, all of which
keep the sound as open as possible.

Like the rest of his colleagues, Frost is involved

in the challenges of realizing Putting It Together. During the number, he says, Caroline
Humphris triggers a sequence of click tracks

that isnt for extra audio, but to keep the orchestra in time with the projections. She triggers the
CSC computer, which then generates a signal
to the lighting desk and onto the Hog to keep
the lighting and video together. In other words,
were using the audio system to keep everyone
in time, rather than to produce any audio. Its
another example of all the departments working together to create a unified effect.

Finishing the hat

As you might imagine, many hands were involved in the processes described above. Aside
from those persons already mentioned, they
include Julie Bowles, Sarah Cant, and Machiko Hornbu (Farleys U.K. design assistants);
Matthew Pachtman (associate costume designer); Cathy Parrott (costumes assistant);
Nick Borisjuk (associate sound designer); Dan
Hoffman (production carpenter); Josh Weitzman (production electrician); John Wooding
and Dorion Fuchs (spotlight operators); Kathy
Fabian (production properties); Rose Howard
(assistant production properties); Brad Gyorgak (production sound engineer); Paul Ashton
(automation carpenter); Steve Jones (flyman);
Jessica Morton (Obsession programmer); and
Larry White (deck sound).

Members of the projection content team include

Nina Wilson (team leader), Raf Anzovin for
Anzovin Studio (rigging), Ciana Fanning (content librarian), Andy McNamara (3-D animator);
Stephen Millingen (character animator); Aaron
Trinder (AFX animator). For Putting it Together, Amy DePrima was visual effects producer
and John Chimples, for Image Maintenance, was
visual effects videographer. Its their combined
efforts that have managed the task of bringing
order to the whole of Sunday in the Park with
George.

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