Canada - The North American premiere of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Wizard of Oz was set for the new year at Toronto's Ed Mirvish Theatre, where a pair of grandMA2s is now on hand to control lighting and video for the new musical.
A.C.T Lighting Canada, in Toronto, supplied the grandMA2s to programmer Joe Allegro of Artistic Illuminations. Hugh Vanstone is the show's lighting designer.
"The show was originally on grandMA 'series 1', but we decided to move all the lighting and video to grandMA2 when the show was remounted in Toronto," says Allegro. "The decision was based on the length of the show commitment: eight months in Toronto and then on tour. In terms of hardware, the grandMA2 is a new platform and very solid; 99 percent of the information from the original production has come across."
Allegro is particularly pleased with the grandMA2's performance with the musical's video content. "It's a lot more flexible on the video side," he says. "The biggest benefit is being able to manipulate video through Art-Net and being able to communicate between lighting and video so that multiple teams can work independently of one another."