Viva Forever!, the musical based on the songs of the Spice Girls, had its World Premiere in London's West End on 11 December and has the audiences dancing in the aisles and happily humming the whole way home.
For Lighting Designer Howard Harrison, it has provided a glorious opportunity to juxtapose almost every conceivable genre of performance lighting in one show. Choosing to use two grandMA2 consoles to programme the lights and AV elements was a first for him. "The only restriction to programming with these consoles is your own imagination. As an end user, I have nothing but praise for the possibilities that the grandMA2 provides and that extends to the support we received from Ambersphere's sales director, Phil Norfolk, who has been incredibly helpful in facilitating all this. It's been a great experience - I get exactly what I want from the design."
Making the most of what the grandMA2 consoles have to offer was lighting programmer Jonathan Rouse along with Neville Bull, in charge of AV. "Although I have used grandMA desks for some time now, this is the first theatre show I have done with a grandMA2," begins Rouse. "During the lengthy programming period Neville and I used separate desks all connected to one system. The beauty of this was that we were able to work both collaboratively and independently with the greatest of ease. If Nev didn't want me triggering video cues whilst we were working he would just move his playback to a different fader and work there, which would then mean that our two cue lists were completely divorced from each other, but then when we were all working on timing of sequences, he would move it back to its show running fader, and everything would sync up perfectly.
"Of course an added bonus for the whole production has been that, due to the speed of the console and the set-up we used for programming there haven't been any conflicts with other departments; we haven't kept anyone waiting once."
The Clay Paky Sharpy features prominently and Harrison comments, "To successfully reference the TV talent show and create that particular look it simply had to be the Sharpy. Ambersphere were able and willing to have them colour matched to our set which was, of course, vital to complete the whole look. They are, simply, a great unit."
