The burning of Zozobra during the Fiestas de Santa Fe took place on August 31 and featured CHAUVET Professional Maverick and Rogue fixtures during the ceremony.
This entire spectacle was accented with appropriately intense colors (often varieties of red and dark purples) created by 10 Maverick MK2 Spot and 24 Rogue R2 Wash fixtures.
John Garberson of Creative BackStage, and his team (programmer Andrew Latimer and tech assistant Wes Webb), arranged the moving fixtures on 4’ high road cases that were spread 10’ apart on the stage. Each case had two Rogue units and one Maverick fixture. At each end of this line, there were two Rogue R2 Washes on 5’ truss for side lighting.
“This is really a totally visual event, so lighting obviously plays a key role,” said Garberson. “Getting the right colors was extremely important. Given that this event is focused on a fire, red was one of our dominant colors, but we didn’t want to make this one-dimensional. Since there is an element of the supernatural to this event, we also wanted to create some eerie looks. We did this very effectively by lighting the ghouls in shades of purple. We were able to focus our lights to create some scary shadows too.”
Being called upon to light a stage that spread out 150’ in width, Garberson appreciated the output and speed of his Maverick and Rogue fixtures. “We had performers going up and down the steps of the stage and had no trouble covering them with light,” he said. “Our lightshow stood out and had an impact on the crowd.”
Photo Credit: John Garberson
