Sunday in the Park with George
PRG’s technology innovations help designers expand their creative horizons.
The Challenge: Support a seamless blend of lighting and projections.
The Solution: Roundabout Theatre Company’s 2008 Broadway revival of Steven Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George broke new ground in its use of projections as the dominant scenic element. Nominated for a Tony Award® for his work on the musical, lighting designer Ken Billington called on PRG to supply the lighting equipment for the production, including its proprietary Virtuoso® console.
Virtuoso enabled the precise control needed to blend the stage lighting with the omnipresent projections into a single seamless experience for the audience, says Billington. “The choice of Virtuoso was very simple, really a no-brainer,” he recalls. “The whole show is done with shutters; there are no irises — it is all VL3500Q™ and VL1000™ Arc fixtures. Virtuoso deals with shutters better than anything I have seen.”
David Arch programmed the show using Virtuoso’s new v6.0 software. “I like it a lot,” he reports. “Virtuoso is one of the best consoles on the market for clearly displaying data. The new Cue Data window quickly shows me what I need to know. Being able to work quickly in Blind, to look at information and edit it — Virtuoso is very good at that.”
“The Virtuoso worked perfectly,” adds Billington. “It was effortless.”