Rob was supposed to have spent some of this summer in Tokyo, working on the return of the Japanese production of Billy Elliot, returning for a season after its 2017 debut in the country.
Understandably, he is not there - but the production is moving ahead, having loaded in to the theatre this week, with technical rehearsals getting underway now.
However both Rob and lighting designer Rick Fisher are helping out with some ‘socially distanced’ lighting - distanced by 6000 miles!
Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, it had been agreed to make some changes to update the lighting rig, with VL2600 LED fixtures replacing some of the previous TW1 and Revolution fixtures. Though the Japanese lighting team were familiar with the show having worked on the 2017 production, to give them the best possible start with the new lights Rob set up a mini-rig of the old lights next to the new lights in London. This allowed him to match the look of the new (in terms of colour, beam, edge and position) to the look of the old. At the same time, he created a virtual model of the rig in the Augment3D visualiser that is now built into the Eos-family consoles the show uses. The showfile was then transferred across to Tokyo, ready to go.
There is now a running communication between the Japanese lighting team led by Yuta Watanabe, via the wonderful interpreter Sonoko Ishii, swapping information, ideas, pictures, suggestions and reminders that it’s time to be done for the day and to adjourn for socially distanced drinks.
This remote lighting is alongside the remote work involved in getting the rest of the production on, which has seen rehearsals in Tokyo led by a director via Zoom from England and a choreographer via Zoom from Australia.
Billy Elliot opens in Tokyo at the end of September, playing a season there before moving to Osaka.