If you are not “into” lighting, then you may not have paid any attention to the beams of light that seem to descend from the lighting fixtures towards the stage. There’s nothing special about the lights –the beams are produced when the light is reflected from millions of tiny drops of haze. Haze is produced by a machine that’s located above the stage behind the teaser (upper curtain). Haze is distinct from “fog.” A fog machine produces clouds of visible, dense, rolling fog, while haze is supposed to hang unobtrusively in the air until it’s hit with a light beam. Ideally, you would never see the haze being produced, but because of the location of our hazer, it sometimes looks more like fog when it gets blown around by the air handlers. The reason I’m writing about haze this week is because on April 22 our haze machine was out of commission. Look at the photos from this week and compare them to previous weeks. The haze adds color and depth to the stage.
I’m excited that we’re finally adding color to the front of the stage. For Easter, we added three pars near the front on each side of the stage, with blue gels. They were a critical part of achieving this look: