The Laramie Project

At the moment, I'm sitting in tech for CRT's production of The Laramie Project, knitting myself some striped armwarmers because it has gotten incredibly cold, dreary, and winter-like here at the University of Connecticut. I am able to do this (as an ATD) because the set is minimalist and I have very few notes to attend to! This is my first assignment as an MFA candidate in Technical Direction here at Uconn, where besides assisting the TD, I have been a consultant on the fairly complicated projection system.

This Laramie set (designed by Tim Brown) features a large projection screen, two towers of monitors, and several other monitors for a fourth system in the back of the set. I will be adding pictures to this soon. The four systems of projections needed to take a feed each and also a live camera feed used during the show. We used Qlab to slave three macbooks to a fourth control system in the booth. We then used Watchout for the fourth system (which is only used at one point and requires only one video). The slave machines were controlled via midi from the control machine, and cue lists could be edited from one location (the control machine) via screenshare. The camera feed (a "period" camera) had its analog signal converted into digital, put into a cardcapture to usb connector, and then fed into all three systems. Much ot our surprise, cardcapture to usb for analog signal simply didn't function, so we had to go digital even though we were concerned about distance.

System diagrams and a more thorough explanation of methods is forthcoming. If you have specific questions on our methods or are trying to do something similar yourself, please feel free to leave a comment!

Please join us at the Connecticut Repertory Theater October 8-18th to see "The Laramie Project" directed by Vincent Cardinal at the Nafe Katter Theater.

Buy tickets and find out more here