‘Dear Evan Hansen’ Opens in London with disguise vx 4 Powering Scenic Video Projections

The Tony Award-winning Best Musical ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ opened in London 19 November at the Noel Coward Theatre with video projection comprising the shows entire stage scenery.

Supplied by Stage Sound Services, three disguise vx 4 and four gx 1 servers powered projections for the show, highlighting the huge impact of social media on daily life and create an immersive social media environment on stage for the actors.

“The cornerstone of the play is Evan and his interaction with the real world through a social media lens,” says Projection Designer Peter Nigrini. “To successfully tell our story, social media needed to be a visceral part of the theatrical environment. After the set designer created a physical environment, my job was to bring this virtual world to life on stage and give it the emotional power that so many teenagers clearly feel in their day to day lives.”

Every surface of the playing space can be covered by content. Display surfaces include a front projection system, a series of portals and tracking panels, flat-panel LCD monitors and the stage floor. Eight projectors and 32 monitors are deployed.

Peter notes that, “every piece of scenery that moves in the design is automated, and we can track it in real time. In moving the show to London we were also able to pre-visualise the entire production in New York, make decisions about automation and scenery in response to the changed dimensions of the London production. We were able to feed this back to other departments so it could all be pre-programmed. Integration with automation is key in disguise.”

The nearest audience member is three meters from the stage, he says, “so the tolerances we needed to achieve for that level of proximity are different from an arena environment for touring. There is an incredible delicacy to it; in an arena production everything is in motion and at a distance no one will see the imperfections, but in the most emotional moments of this production, when all is dark and quiet the technology must be flawless.
Theatre pushes these boundaries and that demand for visual perfection ripples into the quality of the servers and software required.”

disguise was chosen “to have precise control over where tiny fragments of image are mapped,” says Peter. “I’ve always skirted the edge of disguise’s capacity in my shows. It is a perverse inversion of scale you experience when working in the theatre – we are working in a tiny space but with 40 HD video channels and requiring the capacity of the vx 4 to deliver them.”

Cast rotation plays a central role in ‘Dear Evan Hansen’. The company has 17 actors in total, with 8 actors on stage at one time. With a changing cast for each performance, each of whom appear in pre-recorded video footage during the show, the disguise real-time workflow helps facilitate cast rotation and the live video effects.

“We program a file that has an image of Evan Hansen, and each of the actors who could play the role. Before the show the stage manager tells us which actor will play the role in that performance, and we set the footage for that actor. We can switch that footage in real-time and it ripples through the whole production saving a lot of time. We don’t leave disguise programmers on the show for its run, so this feature allows us to build a show with all of those pieces of content existing within the machine at any given time so it can be managed by those staff members who remain on-site.”

Cast rotation is also used with camera presets, Peter adds. “The only character who isn’t
pre-recorded has a live camera so now the camera preset we use is based on that lookup
table, ensuring the camera shots are aligned with the actor’s height.”

“Throughout the prep and technical rehearsals we worked closely with the show’s video design and production teams to assist with any equipment alterations and could always rely on the disguise servers to perform every step along the way,” says James Paul, Senior Account Manager with Stage Sound Services, which was awarded the rental contract. “Before the video system was finalised we were fortunate enough to be able to upgrade the original specification from disguise 4×4 pro servers to vx 4 servers, which played a big part in bringing the show’s demands to life.”

Tickets for the London run of ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ are selling fast, and disguise is poised to help the audience favourite deliver an acclaimed production show after show.

Credits:
Servers were supplied by Stage Sound Services
Projection Designer: Peter Nigrini
Associate Projection Designer: Dan Scully
UK Associate Projection Designer & System Architect: Mogzi Bromley-Morgans
Lead Animator: Andrew Bauer
Additional Animators: Dan Vatsky, Kate Ducey
Programmer: Katie Pitt
Lead Production Engineers: Mike Higgs & Mollie Tuttle
US System Consultant: Asher Robinson

SCROLL POSTS

A Few Kind Words...

Kapil Gadhire, Head of Marketing, Magnifi

From the word go, team Bubble was super detailed, efficient, and exhaustive in their approach. They are true partners and make an effort to understand the ideology and end goal to plan the perfect media pitch and strategy.

Lauren Myers, Director, Integrated Marketing – Ross Video

Working with Bubble during and after IBC 2022 for PR and press support was exceptional. Their professional approach, strategic communication, and extensive media network generated significant exposure for our brand. Bubble's on-site support was outstanding, ensuring our story was accurately told to a global audience. Their post-IBC efforts further amplified our reach and provided valuable analytics. An experienced, professional team and a total joy to work with.

Andrew McKinlay, Marketing Director, Avolites

All amazing, just grateful I know I can rely on Bubble to get the job done brilliantly.

Tanya Rai, Marketing and Communications Manager, Pebble

Team Bubble are an extension of our own team. They are wonderful to work with, reliable, get the job done and gain great exposure for our business in key publications.

Mike Ward, Head of Marketing, Singular.live

Since we first started working with them, our team at Bubble have acted very much like an extension of our team. They work with us to try and help us achieve our goals and we very much feel that they have our interests at heart as well as having our backs when we need it!

Gavin Bunker, AE Live

Bubble were fantastic throughout the whole process and helped us deliver a successful event to celebrate our 30th corporate anniversary with industry peers.

Robert Cloudt, Synchronized

Bubble has been tremendously helpful to bring our marketing communication to the next level, very responsive and thinking with us together on the rightful messaging and timing across different media’s. Definitely a recommendation in case you need a well balanced media agency to help you out.

Carla Molina Whyte, Farmerswife

Working with Bubble Agency for a tradeshow has been truly amazing. The bubble team is incredibly helpful and talented. We are very happy with the results and with all the coverage we got prior and during the tradeshow!

Silvia Candido, Ateme

As usual, we were super busy before and during a tradeshow this year. What a luxury to have Bubble take care of our media relations and our social media accounts! We saw a surge of followers on LinkedIn and got good coverage in a number of publications.

Meg Travis, Iron Mountain Entertainment Services, Director, Global Head of Marketing & Communications, Entertainment Services

The Bubble team made everything easy at MPTS! From advising before the show, to facilitating client and press conversations during the show, to making recommendations on how to make the most of the connections we made there - we rely on Bubble as a key strategic partner for our sales and marketing teams.