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INSTALLATIONS
PROJECTION LIGHTS & STAGING NEWS
AFTER CeLINE, ‘ ANOTHER DAY DAwNS
The Colosseum at Caesars Palace Hosts Cher, Bette Midler and Elton John
Set elements like the giant pearl that opens to reveal Cher are
designed for visual elegance, yet don’t distract attention from
the main focus on the star.
By JenniferWillis
Wi thin
the last
two decades,
Las Vegas has seen a cycle of
high-stakes one-upsmanship among
the casinos lining the Strip, with aging casinos
imploding to make way for full-service
resorts that have become world-class destinations
for gambling, fine dining and relaxing
in the sun.
The competition to fill the seats of the
vast casino showrooms is no less intense. The
various Cirque du Soleil productions in town
now play to an audience of 9,000 or more per
night, and audiences are expecting the same
kind of crowd-pleasing visual spectacles for
musical performances as well.
Caesars Palace took note and hired former
Cirque du Soleil director Franco Dragone for
A New Day…, the musical spectacular featuring
Céline Dion, which opened in 2003. It also
built a new theatre specifically for that show,
the 4,148-seat Colosseum, which played before
sellout crowds regularly through 2007.
Betting on a New Trifecta
PLSN
So how do you top a show that enjoyed
a five-year run, with a 73 percent sellout rate
and ticket sales in the $400 million range?
Caesars’ solution was to sign three of the biggest
draws in the music biz — Cher, Elton
John and Bette Midler — give each of them
a spectacular set, and have them rotate their
performances throughout the season.
“With an artist as versatile as Cher it is
important that the technology is equally as
versatile,” says Baz Halpin, lighting director
for Cher. “Whether Cher is on our customized
longboat in a lake of smoke singing
the mesmerizing ‘After All’ or belting out
‘Turn Back Time’ to a screaming audience,
we have tried to create a show which both
captures the intimacy of a theatre and delivers
the large scale punch of arena rock.
Cher has the audiences dancing on their
seats every night without fail.”
The production and design teams for all
three shows — Cher at the Colosseum at Caesars
Palace, Elton John’s The Red Piano and Bette
Midler’s The Showgirl Must Go On — worked
in concert to come up with plans and equipment
lists that would allow the shows to rotate
in and out easily throughout the 2008 performance
season. Initial meetings for lighting and
set design came about a year prior to the first
show,
with pre-production
design for Cher’s show beginning in
earnest about eight months before opening.
“The design team spent a long time
discussing the concepts before we ever
put pen to paper, so there were very few
changes,” says Halpin. “I think we are on version
four of the plot, which is a testament
to in-depth discussion and ensuring a full
understanding of the vision before starting
to add lights to a plot.”
Doing hand illustrations and using tools
like AutoCAD, Photoshop, VectorWorks,
SketchUp and 3DS Max, the team went to
work creating a design that would maximize
the flexibility of The Colosseum and allow for
quick load-ins and load-outs as the shows
rotate. Cher production designer Jeremy
Railton says his main goal was making Cher
happy so she could enjoy herself onstage.
“It’s all to make a comfortable environment
for the performers that tells the story of
the show,” he says. “Theatrical events should
happen seamlessly and not stop the show
and overshadow the performers.”
Cher’s fans have come to expect “glittery
rock ‘n’ roll with plenty of spectacle,” says
Railton, and he made sure his design delivers
just that to Las Vegas audiences. With three
different shows sharing the same venue,
space had to be used as efficiently as possible.
The lighting designers for Cher, John
and Midler agreed on a kit list that would
satisfy the needs of each performer.
“Each show had to be visually polemic
due to the nature of the artists, but all three
shows had the same 120-foot video wall
and the same stock of lighting equipment
to design from,” Halpin says.
A Flexible and Dynamic Rig
PLSN
The Cher equipment list includes 95 Coemar
Infinity Wash fixtures, 60 Vari*Lite VL3000
Spots, 24 VL3500 Spots, 24 VL2202 Spots, 39
VL3500 Wash fixtures, 46 Clay Paky Profile SVs,
14 Syncrolites, six Robert Juliat followspots,
one Lycian 3K followspot, 14 Martin Atomic
3K Strobes, two Hungaro Strobes, 24 Color
Kinetics ColorBlasts and 18 Chroma-Q Color
Blocks.
There are also six
Pixel Range PixelLine LEDs, 34 4-lighters, 20
police beacons, 120 strings of twinkle lights,
12 Pathway 4-Port Nodes and one Martin
Maxedia Pro media server.
“The lighting is not consistent from show
to show,” explains Caesars Palace Colosseum
technical director Bob Sandon. “It’s a different
hang for each of them. Bette and Elton
are similar, but between Bette and Cher,
it’s completely reworked. The pieces are all
there, just assembled a little different.”
In designing the lighting for Cher’s
show, Halpin wanted to create a variety
of styles within a single space. “We move
from arena rock to West End theatre to Vegas
glitz,” he describes, “so it was important
that the lighting was flexible and dynamic
enough to work within all disciplines.”
Halpin uses a Studio Due Dominator to
backlight a giant pearl in which Cher makes
her entrance.
“It’s a 6K Xenon breakup fixture which
literally dominates the stage,” he says. “We
also use 40 Jem Hydra smoke machines with
steam fluid to create smoke chases and a
faux CO2 effect for the battlefield scene.”
Special Effects and Ethernet
PLSN
Smoke and confetti are consistent
across all three shows and additional special
effects for Cher include full color lasers
from LaserNet. LED fixtures internally light
the individual set pieces for Cher’s show,
and Halpin uses ColorBlasts and DB4s to illuminate
band members and band risers.
“I like LEDs both for their low power
consumption and low heat, which means I
can position them closer to soft goods,” Halpin
says. “With LED technology moving forward
at such a rapid pace, I am sure lighting
rigs will become more and more efficient
and environmentally friendly.”
All told, The Colosseum went from
12 lighting universes for the Céline Dion
show to 31 universes for the 2008 season.
The Cher and Midler shows are controlled
through two Martin Maxxyz+ consoles, and
the Elton John show uses an MA Lighting
grandMA. ETC Sensor
Dimmer racks
— with 1,348 dimmers —
were chosen for their versatility
and reliability.
“It is all Ethernet based. All demultiplexing
and signal processing is in-built within
The Colosseum and runs throughout the
building,” says Halpin.
All three shows make use of the house
rigging, which Halpin describes as a combination
of Niscon digitally controlled linesets
and conventional hoists and trusses.
The load-in for the Cher show took about
two weeks, including rehearsals.
Lighting a Huge Space
PLSN
For Halpin, working in Las Vegas and in
The Colosseum for the first time presented
some challenges.
“It is obviously much larger than a conventional
theatre yet it still has more restrictions
to design than an arena,” he says.
Halpin was encouraged by the amount of
atmospheric and ambient light control The
Colosseum offers, but he still had to deal
with lighting one of the biggest proscenium
spaces in the country.
“This is a huge performance space to
light properly without overlighting,” Halpin
says. “It was quite challenging in the design
process to ascertain the best fixture placement
in order to get big rock and roll cathedral
looks while at the same time ensuring
that we are not bombarding the audience
consistently with high-powered lighting.”
For Cher at the Colosseum, the set design
calls for creating a false proscenium
through the use of two 45-foot on-stage
towers — designed by Tait Towers — that
close the space to a more manageable 72-
feet and create a visually dynamic set.
“We can go from small and intimate, to
action that spans 140-feet across the stage
and 40-feet vertically,” Halpin says.
Railton says that designing for a permanent
stage is usually easier and less expensive
than designing for a touring production,
but this particular show has to be a
blend of both.
“The three shows all are sharing the theatre.
Although we load out most of the scenery,
some of the heavy stuff remains,” Railton
explains. “The difficulty was to squeeze in our
scenery on top of the other two shows.”
28 PLSN SEPTEMBER 2008