Green Hippo

RADA's Little Women

RADA's Little Women

RADA customary stages a programme of plays each year, interrupted by one exception, the annual musical. This year it was the intriguingly named Little Women – the Broadway Musical, based on the novel by Louisa May Alcott, at the Jerwood Vanbrugh Theatre.

Staged at the request of the owner Josef Weinberger, the RADA production was the European premiere - and off-West End trial - for a musical which has previously enjoyed great success on Broadway. Weinberger approached RADA to produce the show because of the school’s reputation for high production and acting abilities and a pre-existent discerning audience. The show was staffed by students, some of whom also took roles in the production amongst a number of professionals on both the acting and technical front.

Amongst the professionals, from who(m) the students benefit from working alongside their knowledge and experience, were Director Geoff Bullen, Designer Mark Simmonds who has designed for the RSC and Royal National Theatre and Musical Director Michael Haslam.

Lighting Design was by RADA’s Head of Lighting and Sound, Matt Prentice and Video Design by Green Hippo’s Nigel Sadler, assisted by student Tom Lightbody.

With the limited budget of a student production, there was no possibility of multiple sets to create the numerous internal and external scenes demanded by the story line. Instead the set was restricted to one solid-built attic where Louisa May Alcott wrote her book. The remainder of the locations were provided by projections which created the entire repertoire of scenery including the beach at Cape Cod, the garden and an outdoor wedding scene, all projected onto the various walls of the attic set.

This is the first production for RADA which involves video and projection on such a scale. Nigel used three large projectors to cover the whole set - one Barco ELM-R12 on loan from PSL Events and two Panasonic PTD 7700 on loan from the Royal National Theatre. The Hippo count was one each of HD and Stage units all running off Timeline. Nigel also had the opportunity to test run some new functions in the Hippotizer software which will be incorporated into Version 3.1 at a later date.

“It was a fantastic experience to work with the very talented students at RADA,” said Nigel, “and to have the freedom from Geoff to project onto the non-standard surfaces of the set.”

The entire show was programmed by RADA student, Tom Lightbody, after only one day at Hippo School.

Surviving the experience, he says “I had a really great time doing Little Women, learning the Hippo in a real situation outside the safety of the classroom."

“The HippoSchool training was still fairly fresh in my mind when it came to programming the show, and of course I had Nigel on hand pretty much all the time to tidy up any mess I made on the timeline!"

“Learning the whole process from scratch was hugely enlightening. Not just the Hippotizer software, but also a large amount of work with Photoshop, image sourcing, and pretty much all elements of the video design process."

“It was such a delight for me to work with Nigel, and a bit of a coup for RADA, I think. To have someone of his calibre dedicating the time he did to such a relatively small show was great, and I should love to work with him again.”

The RADA Hippo had another outing the following week, as part of a "son et lumiere" project for the specialist Lighting students, and was used much more simply for a show at the end of the term in RADA's smallest theatre.

Looks like that is one little Hippo who has found a very good home!