Accidental Death of an Anarchist

At The Plowright Theatre, Scunthorpe: 2nd - 6th May 2017

What were we asked to do ?

We were asked to support this production covering areas in stage crew, lighting and sound.

How did the event go ?

Although this was a relatively simple production in terms of set and tech, there were some challenges to be overcome. The play had only two scenes, each one a different office in the same building. The second scene had a large window that a character need to climb through so it had to be more robust than just a ‘hole’ in a standard flat. This would have made the scene change very difficult, so instead the whole set was fixed and the window covered for the first scene. A smaller window from the first scene was covered with a large picture, giving the appearance of two different rooms.

Most of the lighting was just standard office lighting, but the windows had to have the appearance of being outside. This was achieved with lamps on floor stands, and a wash on the cyc from the battens on the lighting bar. A city skyline silhouette was also mounted behind the rear window to give the impression of height (the office for the second scene was on the fourth floor). The colour hue of the lighting was changed to signify different times of day, including night.

Sound was straightforward with standard sound effects run from a program run on the computer called SCS. The only unusual effect was to give the impression of traffic noise when the window of the ground floor was opened. This was achieved by placing a speaker under the window, and routing the sound effect to that one speaker.