Creating the musical from a technical perspective was very fun. As I know the space, I had to be very clever with my design.

The show operated on a school budget, so we had to get creative with the limited lighting and outdated equipment they had available. As Matilda Jr. is a new musical, it was technically demanding. Even in our production, we had 14 separate screens just for AV. We hired 20 intelligent lights (14 movers), a haze machine, a lighting desk, 18M of truss, and a couple hundred metres of cable to get the show.

We had a small tech team, some of which were students from the Hinkley School. As the production manager, it was my responsibility to design and programme the lighting rig, plan the sound, which Mark ran for me, coordinate communications with everyone, and ensure all technical aspects ran smoothly.

I designed the rig for Matilda Jr in a piece of software called Vectorworks (although I have switched to Capture now). This software allowed me to visualise the stage with all the lights and move things around easily. This helps speed things up when you are on site, as it gives you all the measurements, fixture IDs, cable runs, and any other important information you may need. The CaD model is in 3D, but it also creates a 2D version that you can print out and use on site. 

For the design I had 6 moving beam washes, 6 Moving head Profiles, 6 Sorce4’s, 4 cyk washes as footlights and 4 led pars for side light. Although this seems thin, it more than filled the space.

As it was a modern musical with big dances, I designed the show with a festival vibe. This became more evident in the bigger numbers, which included big movements, vibrant colours, and flashes. For one particular sequence, we had to be inventive with shadows and silhouettes, involving a magical scene where we needed to divert attention from certain areas of the stage. To achieve this, I used long leading lines that extended across the stage and gauzes to reflect light.