I was asked to design a suitable lighting rig that would be installed in a large marquee to cover all aspects of a performance telling the story of the Mormon Church. This was the first time the Pageant had been held in the UK, so there was a lot of enthusiasm radiating from everybody involved. My job role was to design the rig, oversee its installation and finally program the console under the guidance of their own LD (Simon) and pass the operation over to an industry student.

Unfortunately there were no design briefs or production meetings, so had to walk through the initial stages of creation blind. This proved difficult when we started to program. Simon had a clear image in his mind of what he wanted, so we started to progress through programming sessions with good speed.It soon became apparent that the show directors vision was completly different to Simon’s, so we spent a further two days making changes, updating and advancing the show. By this point Simon and myself had struck up a good working relationship, which meant that ideas were being bounced between us and we were making great headway with the show.

The Nauvoo Pageant is held in the US every year and on a much larger scale. Two of the creative directors flew out to the UK to assist, however, when they arrived they were not happy with many things it the performance. Things changed around dramatically and they took complete control.

This meant that they wanted heavy input into the lighting, and wanted to change 70% of what we had already programmed. It became apparent that it was sensible to start from the beginning again, but we could only programme with their presence after they had attended rehearsals all day.

This resulted in many long overnight shifts leading into the early morning hours for us to meet our deadline.

This really put my skills as a programmer and a person to the limit, as stress, lack of sleep and emotions built up, but I remained professional and took it in my stride.

The end result was fantastic and I am still proud to be part of the team!