Billy Elliot
City Springs Theatre Company Byers Theatre Sandy Springs, GA
Lighting design for the 2019 production of Billy Elliot at City Springs Theatre Company, directed by Brandt Blocker.
About the Lighting Design
Billy Elliot moves between many locations fast, with the set acting as a framework rather than a series of literal places. Lighting did most of the work of establishing where we were, and when, and how the moment felt. The design wasn’t a passive system across the show. It was an active performer.
That’s the philosophy I keep coming back to: lighting as both a character on stage and a musician in the orchestra. It grows and breathes with the story and the music. It hits when the music hits and pulls back when the scene pulls back.
“Angry Dance” at the end of act one is the loudest version of that idea. Time-coded, big, bright, flashy. Stark white beams, hard flashes, reds. The cues escalated with Billy’s anger, mirrored his physical frustration, drove the emotion through timing rather than just intensity. The audience could feel the music in the lighting the same way they could feel it in the dance. The lighting wasn’t decorating the moment. It was performing alongside it.
The rest of the show kept the same active language at a quieter level. Different scene, different intensity, but the design was always playing along.
- Book and Lyrics
- Lee Hall
- Music
- Elton John
- Based on the Universal Pictures/Studio Canal film by
- Lee Hall
- Director
- Brandt Blocker
- Choreographer
- Cindy Mora Reiser
- Music Director
- Judy Cole
- Scenic Designer
- Campbell Baird
- Costume Designer
- Amanda Edgerton West
- Wig Designer
- George Deavours
- Lighting Designer
- Mike Wood
- Sound Designer
- Steve Kraack
- Associate Lighting Designer
- Dalton HamiltonJessica Creager
- Programmer
- Dalton Hamilton
- Production Electrician
- Kat Cole
- Lighting Shop
- 4Wall (Rep: Tyler Bevel )
About the Show
Set in a northern English mining town against the background of the 1984 miners' strike, Billy Elliot is the inspirational story of a young boy's struggle against the odds to make his dream come true. The plot revolves around young Billy, whose preference for ballet shoes over boxing gloves challenges his father's and brother's conventional version of boyhood. The story of his personal struggle and fulfillment is balanced against a counter-story of family and community strife caused by the UK miners' strike.
Source: MTI
Cast
Liam Redford as Billy ElliotDrew McVety as DadPamela Gold as Mrs. WilkinsonSarah Charles Lewis as Debbie WilkinsonSeth Black-Diamond as MichaelKaren Howell as GrandmaHaden Rider as TonyBethany Irby as MumRob Ouellette as Mr. BraithwaiteAddison AlbrechtAdrienne OcfemiaAllison GannArjaye JohnsonAtarius ArmstrongBrian JordanBrittany EllisCaleb BrinkConnor JacobsD. J. GroomsJonathan ChisolmKinsey BosherLuke BaduraLuke SanderfordMatt BonakerMatt McCubbinRussell ScottRyley PerrySarah Serena ThompsonSawyer PollockSophia OcfemiaT'Arica CrawfordTony Hayes as ensemble
Production Photos
Press
Blocker does a highly impressive job of visually delineating the stark contrasts therein, with a masterful assist from lighting designer Mike Wood.