General

General news and updates on past event production projects.

Gallery Players Presents The Producers, ARTS Provides Video Production

The Producers is a musical adapted by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan from Brooks’ 1968 film of the same name, with lyrics written by Brooks and music composed by Brooks and arranged by Glen Kelly and Doug Besterman. As in the film, the story concerns two theatrical producers who scheme to get rich by overselling interests in a Broadway flop. The humor of the show draws on ridiculous accents, characters of homosexuals and Nazis, and many show business in-jokes. After 33 previews, the original Broadway production opened at the St. James Theatre on April 19, 2001, starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, and ran for 2,502 performances, winning a record-breaking 12 Tony Awards. It spawned a successful London production running for just over two years, US national tours, many productions worldwide and a 2005 film version.

Gallery Players, the longest running community theatre in the Midwest, presents a season lineup highlighting the Jewish experience and work by Jewish playwrights. This season includes three weekends of performances of The Producers, the first three weekends of March.

ARTS provided video production services to Gallery Players for their production of The Producers. A rig was created to mount a Canon DSLR from about 20′ high in their stage house to be aimed down at the stage. The camera recorded a dance sequence that was edited and provided to the team at Gallery Players, which they incorporated into their video projection cues for the show. The video was projected onto the cyc at the back of the stage during a scene in the show.

Hilliard Arts Council, Driving Miss Daisy

Some rental lighting gear was used in the Hilliard Arts Council theatrical production of Driving Miss Daisy, which took place at the Makoy Center in Hilliard, Ohio the weekend of February 28, 2014.

Driving Miss Daisy takes place in the deep South starting in 1948, just prior to the civil rights movement. Having recently demolished another car, Daisy Wertham, a rich, sharp-tongued Jewish widow of 72 is informed by her son, Boolie, that henceforth she must rely on the services of a chauffeur. The person he hires for the job is a thoughtful, unemployed black man, Hoke, whom Miss Daisy immediately regards with disdain and who, in turn, is not impressed with his employer’s patronizing tone and, he believes, her latent prejudice. But, in a series of scenes spanning twenty-five years, the two, despite their mutual differences, grow ever closer to, and more dependent on each other until, eventually, they become almost a couple. Both characters evolve and grow ever closer until, in the end, they realize that they have more in common than they ever believed possible–and that times and circumstances would ever allow them to publicly admit.

This production benefited The Hilliard Civic and Cultural Arts Center.

Marching Band Audio Rack

Building an audio rack suited for a high school marching band’s needs can be a challenging task. High school and college marching bands are getting more and more competitive, and as a result, they’re getting more creative. With technology becoming more accessible to the consumer, marching bands are trying to incorporate more technology into their shows. A very small step in this direction is for marching bands to incorporate electronic instruments into their shows – guitars, synthesizers, etc. These instruments are easy to connect to an amplifier. However, bands are now bringing more equipment onto the field, including full-blown PA systems micing a number of instruments – electronic and acoustic.

A PA system is simple in the audio world: a small mixer, a few wireless mic receivers. With the right microphones, a marching band can mic any instrument in the band, allowing performers to move around. This particular system leaves room for future expansion of additional wireless microphone receivers and connects to the marching band’s main PA audio rack that has the amplifiers for their PA speakers.

40 Nights of Lights, Louisville, Kentucky

40 Nights of Lights was an Axxis Inc production. Light-Up Louisville has been a tradition for more than three decades for thousands of residents and visitors to Louisville, Kentucky.

The city’s annual celebration launches the holiday season with a four-block festival of lights set to music between the Galt House and Fourth Street Live. Light Up Louisville began the day after Thanksgiving with the arrival of Santa Claus who helped illuminate downtown Louisville, followed by fireworks.

The 40 Nights of Lights component featured a nightly light show set to music on 4th St. Along the corridor, tree and street lights were synchronized with the main music and light shows at Fourth Street Live! and the Galt House Hotel. The nightly spectacle also included light projections on buildings along 4th Street.

Assistance was provided to implement the light display using Vivid RGB Lighting’s Pixel360 and Pixy strings with individually-controllable LED pixels and DMX control, providing hardware configuration and installation troubleshooting, and working with Animated Lighting, Inc. staff to implement the client vision. The installation included the setup and strike of hundreds of Animated Lighting, Inc. Pixy string animated decorations, as well as the setup and strike of Staging Concepts’ Relia and SC9600 Bridge Support systems in an 8’x16′ stage, 18′ high configuration.

KaLightoscope Christmas, Louisville, Kentucky

KaLightoscope was an Axxis Inc production. Christmas at the Galt House Hotel is featured on the Travel Channel’s Christmas Crazy special. Located in Louisville, Kentucky, KaLightoscope Luminaries are handcrafted sculpted works of art made by Chinese artisans. Axxis Inc provided the tent, staging, truss, lighting and audio gear, and labor to implement this show.

KaLightoscope is an indoor winter wonderland housed in a Creative Tent Shasta Shelter FTS100 85’x160′ structure with 13k+ square feet of Staging Concepts and Granite Industries deck flooring. Over 700 feet of 12″ truss was suspended by 27 SR5 Stage Maker chain motors and hundreds of rigging points with thousands of feet of rigging cable. Thousands of feet of electrical cable powered the hundreds of lighting instruments and luminaries.

Hands-on work was provided during the installation of the temporary tent structure, staging, rigging, truss structure, electrical, and the final setup of the luminaries.

Convention Center Production Work

Assistance was provided for a convention center production gig in downtown Columbus at the Hyatt Regency Columbus. The event was a high profile corporate banquet-style meeting in the main ballroom of the hotel.

Production support included assembly of prefabricated scenic elements; setup of power distribution, lighting, and audio equipment; hang/focus of various style lighting instruments; and strike of all scenery and equipment after event completion. The event required two box trucks worth of production equipment and scenery.

Nationwide Financial Corporate Meeting

This show was a Bartha production. Nationwide Financial hosted one of their annual corporate meetings at Hilliard Bradley High School. The event brought in about a thousand Nationwide employees from around Central Ohio.