A live reproduction of a cherished children's story
Many of us are familiar with the classic children’s book Goodnight Moon, written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd over 70 years ago. This much-admired bedtime story has been converted to a musical by American composer, Chad Henry. Denver Center for Performing Arts’ Theater for Young Audiences program hopes their theatrical adaptation will engage the imaginations of nearly 42,000 attendees as it runs now through February 16, 2020.
The production’s Lighting Designer, Charles MacLeod, was tasked with making the “Great Green Room” and many of its contents come to life during the adapted tale. Such lighting elements include the fire in the fireplace, the windows of the toy house, the bedside lamp, and the moon and stars. However, since the bedtime story takes about five minutes to read versus the theatrical performance’s 90-minute running time, one significant lighting element was added to support the new plot: a lighted moon shape on the floor.
How Evo-Lite came into play
Charles reached out to Evo-Lite for ideas about making the shape light up on the rug without causing a tripping hazard for the cast. Charles’ hope was that a Plexiglas circle with a printed rug pattern would cover a light source underneath. In order to create the impact he envisioned while keeping the cut-out flush with the rest of the rug, John Wigginton with Evo-Lite recommended using Auragami Light Sheets. Auragami was cut with scissors to follow the outline of the cut-out and multiples were interconnected to fill the area. Also important, the close LED spacing meant that the printed acrylic overlay could be very near the light sheets without showing “dotting” or “hot spots”.\
Simply Successful
The lighted moon effect on the rug has been a great success and the production has been running since October 4th, allowing thousands of pre-kindergarten to third-grade students and educators to experience live theatre. Charles MacLeod was kind enough to invite the Evo-Lite staff and their families to a backstage tour of the stage set. Charles demonstrated how the backstage crew sees and controls the stage appearance, how the lighting is operated during the show, the dressing room where the cast changes and preps, as well as the design department where it all begins.
Some of our staff have a theatrical lighting background, and it was fun to revisit the art and craft of stage sets. For those that don’t have a theater background, it was an incredible eye-opener to see first-hand how much is involved with bringing this children’s book to life.
