Disguise solution drives immersive visuals in Broadway’s “Here Lies Love”

Summary

Central to the play’s production was renovating the Broadway Theatre, one of Broadway’s largest venues, to host a dance floor instead of traditional orchestra seating. Its orchestra seats were removed and a performance space evocative of a nightclub and wrapped with screens was constructed. Audience members are offered ticketing options on the dance floor itself where they stand and move around in various locations including the centre of the action with the cast; elevated gallery seats; the front mezzanine, which now functions as the orchestra with catwalks and satellite stages for the cast; and in the rear mezzanine.

In this Club Millennium, a DJ tells clubbers to enjoy the party as they watch the staff reenact the life of Imelda Marcos. Thirty projectors and more than 60 LCD monitors fill the space and display video content for every moment of the show. Tony Award-nominated Projection Designer Peter Nigrini enhances the club setting with immersive visuals existing as a fundamental storytelling device.

The challenge

Since several hundred audience members experience the show on the dance floor and others from innovative seating, they see the production from many different perspectives. The major addition to this version of the production was the addition of two wireless and eight PTZ cameras that make the show as immersive as possible.

It was necessary for the cameras to exist within the context of the story, visible to the characters and reproducting the action in period appropriate style. As a result, colour control, signal processing and compositing of the live feeds was critical. The cameras also needed to be distributed around the venue depending upon the relationship of any given audience member to the location of the live performance.

The solution

Nigrini selected a disguise gx 2c and three vx 4 media servers to drive the musical’s immersive imagery. A long-time user of disguise media servers, his work and the software have grown up together in many ways. According to Nigrini, much of the way he builds a show is intertwined with the features of disguise.

For “Here Lies Love” Nigrini found that the disguise solution gave him the required degree of flexibility in image processing and distribution. As so much of a showgoer’s experience depends on the seat (or dance floor position) they occupy, it was critical that Nigrini could rapidly check on how the show might look from various places in the theater. The disguise Designer software’s 3D GUI made this possible.

Results

The disguise media server solution helps deliver a complex, immersive musical unlike anything seen on Broadway before. The production has received largely positive reviews with some critics citing an amount of detail unique in Broadway shows and the effective balance of a good time atmosphere and the controversial life story of Imelda Marcos.

With the support of disguise and technical solutions partner, PRG (Production Resources Group), Nigrini delivers compelling visuals that immerse every audience member in Imelda Marcos’s unique story, no matter their chosen seating option.