REPORT 045
CHESTER MYSTERY PLAYS
Company: Chauvet Professional Location: Chester, UK
It comes as no surprise that the English weather has been responsible for driving, for the first time in over 700-years, Chester’s Mystery Plays inside the city’s impressive cathedral, but it is refreshing that the initial obstacle has been a driving force for The Plays’ future survival. The move brought with it technical and organisational constraints, of which one was lighting until Chauvet Europe stepped in as Technical Sponsor. Production Manager, Peter Herbert confessed: “Although good budgets, they weren’t nearly enough to bring the ambitions of the project indoors, particularly in terms of light- ing, so I drew up a list of companies to approach and luckily, my first was Chauvet Europe for lighting and it came on board with us straight away.” Lighting designer, Chris Ellis, continued: “To do justice to the vast setting in the Nave of Chester’s medieval cathedral, I knew we needed a large light rig. With only the most modest of power supplies being available, LED was going to be the only way forward and Chauvet kindly obliged with a selection of some 100 luminaires.” Originally, the performance of the Mystery Plays began with the monks in the medieval period, but was quickly taken over by the townsfolk and guildsmen who, annually, came together in rambunctious execution of these quasi-religious play- lets, covering the rise and fall of humanity but with a contemporary context. The plays cover the Bible’s best known tales. Chris explained: “The story of the Creation starts the show gently but the fervour soon builds as the ‘magical’ garden of Eden is created. This is of course destroyed by the wrath of God in Noah’s Flood - the mother of all storms.” Recreating that storm, Chris brought Chauvet Professional Legend 1200E Wash lights into play as uplights. “For those ‘power moments’ of Heaven, Hell and Tempest, where a real blast of light was required, these units packed a punch – whether they were shooting light 25 metres up into the Tower or lighting up the glorious roof decoration of the vast Nave,” said Chris. “When all is forgiven, a spectacular rainbow is conjured up and dominates the
stage area. This was created by Chauvet’s stunning new Legend 230SR Beam, which we’d installed 20 metres above the stage in the cathedral’s Norman tower to impressive effect. The Legend was one of the mainstays of my rig. Not only was it light enough to be installed high up in the tower gallery without damaging the stone walkways, it proved so versatile. It was stunningly bright as a 2.5º beam, it produced a multi-beam look with little loss of light output and could even soften off enough to produce a stage wash when required. We just added a bit of haze and we had a show.” Supporting the Legends and positioned 15 metres up in the Nave Triforium Gal- leries, were Chauvet Professional’s 560-LED models, comprised of the Q-Wash 560Z-LED and rigged alongside it, the Q-Spot 560-LED. These were used to provide the strong facial accent lighting with good colour rendering.
www.chauvetlighting.com
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