The Circus Starring Britney Spears
PRG’s Bad Boy spotlights Britney Spears as she soars with PRG automation.
The Challenge: Provide a lighting solution offering powerful control and innovative fixtures, ready to tour the world with ease.
The Solution:
The Circus Starring Britney Spears is designed to evoke the wonder, magic and mystery found under the Big Top. Production Resource Group worked with Road Rage, the tour producers, to turn that vision into a reality. “We as creators, on an artistic level, partner in delivering a vision,” explained Tour Producer/Director Steve Dixon. “The people that attend concerts these days are visually savvy; so we tried to give them a show with a grand vision that is larger than life.”
Designer Nick Whitehouse, working with design partner Bryan Leitch and their firm Visual Light Ltd., created the rich lighting design and collaborated with Dixon and Costume Designer/Style Director William Baker on the production design. The team created a spectacular set with a large circular mainstage and two smaller round stages that evoke a three-ring circus. There is a complex automated flying system, engineered by PRG Scenic Technologies that allows scenic elements as well as performers, including Ms. Spears, to soar above the stage.
The aerial work and stage performance of the hardworking Spears and company are given visual depth by Whitehouse’s use of eighteen PRG Bad Boy® luminaires, which add a powerful punch to his circus-themed design. “The show is in the round and I wanted to create a pop spectacle, so I needed to put enough lights out there to accomplish that,” said Whitehouse. “When I saw the Bad Boy, it was the obvious choice. With one light, I can go from a two-inch beam on the mainstage to a full look that covers about 70 feet; and it is crystal clear and bright the whole way out.”
Whitehouse, who operates the lighting console himself, used the new PRG V676 console for the European leg of the tour, making this tour the console’s debut. “I love the layout of the console both in terms of ease of operation and how many functions are on the top layer,” Whitehouse noted. “I can get to everything much more easily. It takes fewer button pushes; there are fewer steps; it is just much faster to program. The V676 is also physically faster in its processing. Plus, it looks really great.”
The design team was also pleased with the automation work of PRG Scenic Technologies. “It is unique automation needed for a concert, more like that for a Broadway show,” explained Dixon. “With PRG, I now have a slick, smooth flying automation system that is precise, repeatable and most importantly a system that is tourable.”
PRG engineered and provided the overhead flying automation including 15 winches. A center lift winch that rotates 720° and works as both a scenery winch and a performer winch is used throughout the performance. The control of the winches is handled by a single operator on PRG’s Commander® console. All of the effects are on submasters on the Commander console where the operator can manipulate the time signatures via faders. There is a grandmaster that can operate all of the effects, as well as individual submasters that control individual winches. All of the drive racks and control intelligence for the system were moved to ground level where they could be more easily serviced. This also reduced the weight on the grid and allowed for faster load in and out.