USA - The creative forces of Blue Man Group (BMG) have been working for two years to bring an all-new production to the Monte Carlo Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. This international entertainment phenomenon - one of many adaptations around the globe from Berlin to Boston -comprises a trio of blue men and an electrifying combination of music and inventive technology celebrating the intersection of art and apparatus. The show, co-created with world-renowned 3-D designer Michael Curry, adds a few new elements to the mix: instruments (including Percussipede, a musical centipede of percussion instruments), a six-piece band and a Showbot robot character.
One of the casino's interior theatres was gutted for BMG's new Vegas home and its audio team descended on the space to build out the room and install a new system. Sound supervisor Marcus Ross spearheaded the efforts and programmed the system, which included a d&b audiotechnik J-Series PA, Meyer Cinema Speaker Surround monitors and an SD7 at the show's audio helm provided by production gear provider Solotech. A DiGiCo SD8 was added a few months later to handle additional audio production elements from behind the curtain.
"Even though we gutted the theatre, there were a lot of things we had to take into consideration in how we set up the system and how things worked," explains Ross, whose extensive audio background includes a mix of Broadway and rock & roll-and a lot of hands-on time behind DiGiCo consoles. "We were kind of predisposed to do certain things based on how prior productions were structured-how we ran cable, where certain racks went, the flow of the system, etcetera. Because there was an install here prior, there was quite a bit of stuff that was useful to us. So I came through and took out the things we didn't need, and starting getting it prepped for the new system. The gear arrived in boxes and in 12 days we were operational-from pallets in the air to hit-the-ground running."
