Hair, Part 2: Let The Lighting Shine

May 8, 2009, By Ellen Lampert-Gréaux

Rather than recreate Hair’s lighting rig from the late ‘60s, lighting designer Kevin Adams wanted it to look more like a present-day production, using a two-part plot. “I wanted it to look contemporary, loose, and kind of off-the-cuff—simple, not over determined,” he says. The first plot includes 120 ETC Source Four PARs—with and without Wybron Coloram scrollers—hung on exposed side ladder structures and 22 ARRI 2kW Fresnels with Wybron CXI scrollers that are used as diagonal backlight. Adams describes this first plot as, “the meat of the lighting for most of the scenes and the songs that are set in a ‘real place,’ which is the theatre where the hippies are hanging out. I wanted the lighting of these sections to reflect the staging, which seems improvised and organic.”

The other half of the plot consists of 60 moving lights, some from Vari-Lite—12 Vari-Lite VL5B Narrow units (no lens), 10 VL2000 Wash units, and 28 VL3500Qs with shutter—plus 10 Martin Professional MAC 2000 Wash fixtures. “When the songs leave the ‘real place’ and go to a more abstracted psychological place, the moving lights provide most of the illumination for those moments,” says Adams. “These are also the rock opera-driven sections of the show that have a more complicated musical structure, and the staging tended to be more geometric and formal. In these sections, the lighting is more muscular and transformative.” PRG Lighting provided the lighting gear for the production.

Adams intentionally left the plot sparse overhead, so as not to overwhelm the audience with dense gear everywhere. “I wanted overhead to look clean and empty,” he says. “And I didn’t mind that automated fixtures and new technology could be easily seen by the audience, although most of what is seen on stage are the PARs, large Fresnels, and empty pipes.”

The automated fixtures are broken down into a few basic systems, most of which mirror a conventional system. “There is a muscular row of 10 MAC 2000 wash units that act as diagonal backlight, just as the 22 2kW ARRIs do,” Adams notes. The exposed diagonal backlight also acts as a framing device for the large empty stage, which is framed on the sides by an exposed ladder structure that contains the ETC Source Four PARs as well as a mirror system of 10 VL2000 wash units. The ladders also contain eight VL5B narrow units that mostly light the band but are also used on the main playing area at times. “Overhead, there are six VL3500Q spot units that act as various specials and psychedelic effect washes,” notes Adams.