- WorldStage provided a media-server driven video package for the hit Broadway musical, “Dear Evan Hansen,”, which relies on the technology to tell the story of a high school senior coping with social anxiety disorder. It is currently playing to packed houses at the Music Box Theatre but WorldStage supported the show’s initial Arena Stage production in Washington, D.C. as well as its Off-Broadway run.
Cast of Dear Evan Hansen
“Everywhere you look there is video: Every surface of the entire playing space can be covered by content whether projection or LCDs,” said Peter Nigrini, projection designer. Display surfaces comprise a front projection system, a series of portals and tracking panels, flat-panel LCD monitors and the stage floor.
“The cornerstone is Evan and his interaction with the real world through a social media lens,” Nigrini explains. “To successfully tell our story, social media needed to be a visceral part of the theatrical environment. After the set designer created the 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 interactions with social media.”
To achieve Nigrini’s look for the social media environment WorldStage utilized d3 media servers from d3 Technologies. WorldStage also supplied Panasonic PT-DZ21K projectors as well as Panasonic PT-RZ12K laser-phosphor projectors; and a pair of Panasonic pan-tilt-zoom cameras, which are used to create live interactions on stage. The d3 systems also feed video to several dozen 32- and 40-inch LCD monitors and are connected to the automation computer for tracking moving scenery.
“It’s an unusually large system with a lot of video signal management and we used a number of tricks to provide additional high-resolution outputs from the same number of server channels,” said Lars Pedersen, WorldStage account executive. “It’s a complicated approach but provides the production with great bang for their budget dollars.”
Nigrini agrees that the production is “ferociously complex – an incredibly complicated machine. There are so many moving parts both real and virtual; d3 tracks 28 points of automation and the show content tops out at just under a terabyte.”
He calls WorldStage, “old friends, a trusted resource with a real understanding of the theatrical process. It’s unusual for a video house to understand the nuts and bolts of theater. We work in small rooms, in miniature, so the tolerances for fit and finish are very high. WorldStage understands the levels of detail and complexity that go into a Broadway show and that I expect in anything that carries my name.”
Nigrini believes d3 is “an essential part of the tool kit” for “Dear Evan Hansen.”
“The days when we could think of projection as a 2d art are over, and d3 allows me to have content fall into the three dimentional stage and move in a seemingly organic way. There are so many little bits of video in the show; the d3 system understands where all the moving parts are and allows me to place content with an incredible level of detail – the fact that I can put the right fragment of video in exactly the right space at the right time is amazing.”
Nigrini notes that WorldStage began work on the production two-and-a-half years ago in Washington. “It’s a long process to become a hit Broadway musical,” he said. “WorldStage is great at understanding that it’s a long, long game.
He believes that “Dear Evan Hansen” is “revolutionary” for its ability to utilize “human beings, video and projection elements to tell a story” that theatergoers obviously connect with.
