Ayrton Diablo takes to the nunnery for Centre Stage London’s Sister Act
Centre Stage London’s production of Sister Act at the John McIntosh Arts Centre is the latest in a 60-year history of large-scale musicals produced to a high professional standard by this non-professional theatre group.
Lighting designer, Ben Sassoon, has lit many of them, but this is his first time using Ayrton Diablo fixtures, which he specified after seeing lighting designer, David Howe’s, use of them on the West End production of A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong. This is also his first time working with Sparks Theatrical Hire which supplied nine of the compact Ayrton units as the show’s workhorse fixtures. “Sparks’ customer service is outstanding,” says Sassoon. “They have an incredible passion for theatre, and Paul Anderson is amazing. They have been true collaborators for us. As a non-profit organisation we don’t operate the same way as other productions but they were so helpful – they literally made miracles happen!”
Sister Act is set in the 1970s, and focuses on Dolores, a club singer who goes into police hiding in a failing nunnery, disguised as a nun, which she saves by the power of music, reinvigorating its choir to sing her style of soul disco music, and thus saving the church from financial ruin. This gives the lighting designer plenty of scope to play with the juxtaposition between dingy environments within a penniless nunnery and the colourful fantasy world of disco.
“I needed a fixture that was versatile enough to do all these things, but I didn’t have a lot of space or weight available to me,” says Sassoon. “The show has a lot of flying pieces, and the weight allowance on the bars was really quite tight, so I needed something that was small, lightweight, but still punchy.
“The theatre’s trim height is relatively low at 6.5m, so the fixture needed to have a really big zoom too. So, when you need something small, lightweight, bright and punchy with a big zoom, I think there’s really only one choice, which is Diablo. These things are amazing. You can literally carry them with one hand!”
Sassoon rigged seven Diablo over stage for back and high side light, keeping them close together to counter the lack of space, and two front of house for specials and general washes, and for ‘pulling out bits of scenery’.
“The show needed to move between many locations – the street, a club, the church – and moods, so I wanted to have the ability to go from really dingy moments when we first see the impoverished church, to really bright, poppy looks full of saturated colour for the disco fantasy moments,” he says. “To be able to show that big disparity was definitely key to the look I was trying to achieve.
“For the church, we kept to cools and gentle warms, and used the framing shutters on the over-stage Diablos to set the scene. We wanted to make it feel like you were in different locations without it looking repetitive, so being able to use the framing shutters to close in on different areas, make interior rooms and corridors, and really hone into specific areas was quite crucial.
“We also had a custom gobo of a gorgeous rose window made, through Sparks, to enhance the big stained glass rose window located at the back of the set. We put this in the upstage Diablo, which was rigged in a very tight space between two pieces of set, in a super wide focus and it filled the whole stage to give a nice shadowy, atmospheric effect. It was the only fixture that would fit in that space.”
For the disco fantasy moments Sassoon moved into ‘supersaturated mode’ to transform the vibe into true ‘70s vividness in the most dramatic way. “Diablo’s colours are great and still really bright, even when they’re saturated, which was extremely helpful,” says Sassoon. “We also used the front-of-house Diablos to project saturated colours onto a mirror ball, enhancing the effect on stage by using the prisms and dot gobos in the on-stage Diablo fixtures. The result was a massive area of light with all those little dots and cool beams across the set and auditorium, taking the mirrorball effect right out into the audience.”
Diablo’s speed was also essential part of Sasoon’s design: “With such a limited rig, the fixtures had to be able to jump between locations at great speed,” he explains. “For one song, Raise Your Voice, the action jumps between a series of quick-change locations in a montage as the nuns learn to sing – the hallway, the choir room, even in the shower – so it was crucial to be able to jump around all those places really quickly. With only nine fixtures, I didn’t have the luxury of a separate light for each location – just the same lights multi-tasking – so Diablo’s ability to make super-fast movements during the dark moments and come up in the right place was paramount.”
Diablo’s quiet operation, despite this being a musical, proved equally important for the quieter moments. “There’s a moment near the end of Act II where, in one of the fantasy dream sequences, the band suddenly stops and the whole stage goes silent, with Dolores in a solo, hard-edge spot from the Diablos. The audience is in close proximity to the fixtures, but you just can’t hear the Diablos at all: no loud fans, just silence, which is exactly what you want in those scenarios.
“The Diablos were definitely my workhorse, and I was very impressed with them. Many of the theatres I work in don’t have the best weight limits or space availability, so being able to pack loads on a bar is very helpful and not something you can do with many other fixtures. Diablo is definitely going to be the fixture I ask for in future.”
Paul Anderson, managing director of Sparks Theatrical Hire, comments: “We invested in Ayrton’s Diablos about four years ago, just as we were emerging from COVID, and they have proved to be very popular ever since. Their compact size is a big factor in their appeal with many of our clients, and what they pack into such a compact unit is staggering.”
Despite their small footprint, the Diablo fixtures deliver an extensive feature set including CMY colour mixing, a colour wheel, iris, shutters, seven rotating gobos, animation wheel, plus an exceptionally impressive zoom range. “I don’t know how they fit everything into such a small unit,” added Anderson “We are always topping up our Diablo stock levels, as we never quite seem to have enough.
« I was thrilled to be able to help Ben Sasoon with ‘Sister Act’ at the John McIntosh Arts Centre, supplying quite a large supplementary rig to complement what the theatre already owned. The lighting states Ben created were absolutely stunning, and I was very proud to play a small part in that.
« For me, it’s all about the relationship with designers, and I hope this is the start of a very fruitful one. The continued expansion of our Diablo inventory reflects growing customer demand for versatile, high-output fixtures capable of delivering premium performance in space-conscious applications.”
Ben Sassoon was aided by associate lighting designer, Paul Evans, and production electrician, Robbie Bradshaw. “Paul and Robbie were essential to getting the show up and running in the limited amount of time we had available to us,” Sassoon says. “Their incredible support helped us achieve the impossible.”
Photos:
© Ben Sassoon
