"With a global audience of 1.4 billion, the ICC 2003 Cricket World Cup's Opening Ceremony in Cape Town on 8 February had no room for glitches." - Click the images to download each of the four pages of the article. You will need Adobe Acrobat.



"Marilyn Lowey's list of credits runs for pages and pages. Steve Moles talks to her during preparations for the World Cup Cricket Games in South Africa."
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Returning To Love September 2000—Glamour returned to arenas across the country as Diana Ross and the latest version of the Supremes went on the road with their Return to Love tour. The show, which opened in June, was headed up by production manager Lars Brogaard, and featured the lighting design of Marilyn Lowey, and video support by Screenco of London and San Francisco.
The initial meetings for the tour began in January, and there were a variety of topics discussed, including the placement of the stage. "When I met with Miss Ross in January, we talked about doing the show in the round," says Lowey. But as time passed, the parameters of the show changed, as they often do. "When I definitely came onboard in April, the stage had moved to the end of the arena," she reports.
The location of the stage wasn't the only factor that changed throughout the production. "Every bit of the way was a work in progress," Lowey continues. "At first, it was just Miss Ross, the two Supremes, and a 14-piece band. Then it grew to a 35-piece orchestra, then we added 10 dancers, and then three backup singers."
Lowey used a veritable cornucopia of equipment to create a visually elegant show. "When you have a medium-sized budget, you really need to be creative in the fixtures that you select to create your layers of light," she says. "We started with the basics--PARs with color faders on them, and then I added [High End Systems] Cyberlights®, Studio Colors®, and the Coemar C7s." Overall, the lighting of the tour reflected the evolution of concert lighting over 30-odd years. "I basically brought the 60s and 70s into the show and, using color, made them look quite different from the 80s and 90s," the LD adds.
There was also more to lighting the tour than one would expect. "One of the most important things that I was told early on was that the relationship between Miss Ross and the audience was one of the most critical and fascinating things you'll come across working on this show," Lowey says. "Once I started working with her, I realized how important that relationship was, so in every song, I illuminated the audience in front of her so she can see them at all times. For this show, the moles were more like a base, and I used the C7s or the Cyberlights and the Studio Colors on top of that," she adds.
To complete the look of the show, the tour featured quite a bit of video support. There were three video screens on stage, two in the arena on stage right and stage left, and one large LED video screen upstage. Although the video was always a planned part of the tour, Screenco, the supplier of the projection equipment, didn't get involved until very late in the game. "The show was being thought about for some time, but it was really only 10 days before it went out that we were formally onboard," says Screenco managing director Dave Crump. And by that time, Screenco was in one of its peak seasons, and had rented out the bulk of its equipment. "We ended up subcontracting a system from Saco in Montreal, which is the manufacturer of the system," Crump reports. "Actually, the system that was used on the Return to Love tour was originally built for Celine Dion," he confides.
The primary video system consisted of an LED video screen 10 modules wide by five modules high, which was configured in a widescreen format. "Lately, shows are using video more and more creatively, and they are tending to go with a widescreen look, because it fits the conventional shape of the stage, and the screens are being used more and more as a backdrop behind the stage, as opposed to something that is stuck out on the side in the wings to show people in back some closeups," Crump says.
Another interesting aspect of the show was that it used picture-in-picture technology on the upstage screen, mixing live images with stills, which was accomplished through the used of an Electrosonic vector. "The vector differs from normal video wall controllers in that it can do a lot more effects and it runs in the high resolution computer domain, so we don't have to do as many stages of signal conversion," Crump reports. "All of the switching between widescreen images, the live images, and the archive images are all done in the vector, and it's all preprogrammed. It's not a regular switcher, because it's actually doing image splitting."
But, at the end of the day, it wasn't technology that got the reviews--it was the music that spans four decades. "We all grew up to this music, and it's still great," concludes Lowey.
—Sharon Stancavage Copyright ETEC, 2000. All rights reserved.

The Lost Continent David Barbour Nov 1, 1999— The Lost Continent is that rarest of theme park venues--one with no tie-in to any films, books, or comic strips. It is divided into three very different zones: The Lost Continent, which has an Atlantis theme, Merlinwood, which evokes the world of King Arthur, and Sindbad's Village.
The main attractions in the Lost Continent are Poseidon's Fury: Escape From the Lost City, a walk-through attraction, and the Eighth Voyage of Sindbad, a stunt show. Not for the faint-hearted is the Dueling Dragons ride, a pair of intertwined roller coasters guaranteed to terrify anyone who just looks at it.
According to island producer Amelia Gordon, the Lost Continent's singular nature offers both opportunities and challenges. "When you do Spider-Man, you have a great deal of information about him. When you want to create some mythic story, you have many choices to make. That's a wonderful palette of freedom, from a designer's perspective, but it also means that many, many people can have opinions about what's going on and it makes the decision-making process more difficult."
If the conception of the Lost Continent is a bit diffuse, the execution of it is detailed in the extreme. Adirondack Scenic, Inc. built a number of sculptural pieces for the island, including two griffins which greet guests at the entrance gates, a winged lion, a sleeping lion, an octopus cartouche, and, most spectacularly, the two giant Dueling Dragons found outside the roller coaster of the same name...Read More



It was Marilyn who had attracted my attention to the new show. She got the job through having worked previously with American director Bob Turk who devised the production, and it was principally to see the new lighting that I had come. Emmy award-winning Lowey is perhaps best known for her long term professional relationship with Neil Diamond, whom she has been lighting for over 15 years, though she has many credits in industrials, plus television and film, as well as lighting many other performing artistes and spectacular events. However it was Valente and Panhuys who explained how the new show came about, and gave me a taste of the sheer scale of the exercise: “One of the ways the Lido keeps ahead of the competition is that we totally re-vamp the show every four years,” they told me. “And by re-vamp, what we mean is creating an entirely new show from costumes and props, to sets and drops, stage machinery, sound, lighting and dimmers, the complete interior of the night-club, the carpet, the upholstery, everything! Absolutely everything, is re-designed and renewed.” And all done in two months on site, of which only one month was allowed for the entire lighting and sound installation, including cabling.
But, Lowey is certainly not complaining. Less than 18 months after setting up her own office, Lowey & Company, Lowey can say, “Word of mouth is good. There’s a lot of work out there and people are beginning to call me with jobs.” Of course, Lowey has not been in the business a mere 18 months—it is just in this last year and a half that she has been on her own.
Lowey, with a BFA in theatre design from Emerson and an MFA in lighting design and theatre technology from Carnegie-Mellon, is quick to admit that it was a mid-1970’s trip to Czechoslovakia that changed her life. She was one of 10 students selected to attend that Prague Quadrennial. It was during one of the group discussions that she suddenly realized, “You study and you study and all of the sudden you realize it’s not about teaching lighting. It’s not about teaching scenery. It’s teaching how to see. How do you teach someone to see?”
It was on this PQ 75 expedition that Lowey met lighting designer Gilbert Hemsley. She then taught with him at the University of Wisconsin during 1976-77. Returning to her native New York, she landed a position Imero Fiorentino Associates. Seven years later Lowey transferred to Fiorentino’s Los Angeles office. “I had always wanted to live in California,” she admits. “I always wanted a pool.” In June 1985 she struck out on her own. She doesn’t have the pool...yet.
Lowey who is handling the lighting chores for tonight’s Champions on Ice show at the Pepsi Center — grew up in New York where her parents made the theater, ballet and art an important part of her life. That foundation led her to study acting and theatrical design as an undergraduate at Emerson College and as a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University.
“I was much better at design than at acting,” Lowey said. “By the time I was a sophomore I knew I wanted to study lighting.”
Lighting design drew her she said, because it combines the artistic and the technical.
“I like the fact the art was more creating in your mind’s eye what you wanted to see and then actually creating that and learning how to do that. It is kind of like hand-eye coordination, but this is more like brain-eye coordination. And then, executing it with your lighting instruments.”
Lowey’s 25-year lighting career includes all styles of entertainment and art, from running a follow spotlight at a strip club in Boston’s infamous Combat Zone to lighting the Boston Ballet and Boston Opera.
“I graduated grad school in 1976, and in every waking moment after I...worked in the business,” Lowey said. “It was nonstop. I was impassioned and a definite type A about it.”
Her passion and drive brought early and enduring success.

Every February in the Saudi Arabian city of Riyadh, the Royal Family holds a celebration entitled Al Janadriyya. The festival is comprised of two separate shows—the men’s show and the women’s show, which is traditionally held outside of the theatre and is much smaller. This year, however, things took a different turn to mark the 100th anniversary of the festival, which celebrates the taking of Riyadh by Abdul Aziz, and the women’s festival came out of the shadows as it produced tow standing room only performances in the 8,000 capacity Al Janadriyya Theatre.
The Saudi aspects of the show were coordinated by Princess Abeer Bint Turki, who wanted to have as many women involved in the show as possible. For her director, she chose Noura Sakkof, who is not only female, but of Saudi decent and a London resident. “There are very few women, if any, that are trained in theatre in Saudi Arabia,” Sakkof explained. “I had been returning to Saudi Arabia and doing some work in fashion shows, and I was recommended."

CREWING    Before leaving for Saudi Arabia, Railton and Stevenson began to put together a production crew. One of the first people he approached was his long time friend, lighting designer Marilyn Lowey. According to Lowey: “My first meeting on the project was in September, when I was meeting with Princess Abeer and Entertainment Design Corp. it seemed like a project that was too good to be true.” Once Lowey signed on board the festival, she brought along her assistant Dave Mann (who called the cues for the two Gladiator III follow spots on the show), programmer Christian Choi (who worked on the Wholehog II console) and, to round out her staff, Sean Nugent who programmed a Vari*Lite rig on the Artisan board. Lowey also worked with Vari-lite in Dubai, to provide the automated and conventional lighting, which consisted of 42 VL2Cs, 54 VL5s, 38VL5Arcs, 274 par 64s, 24 ETC 26 degree Source Fours and 25 four-cell cyc units. Meanwhile Lowey was in regular touch with E/T/C in Paris (sub-contracted by Production Arts, who coordinated the projection staff and services) to provide five rotating/scrollingPIGI projectors.
2005-2006 PLSN Lighting Designer of the Year
1998-1999 Themed Entertainment Association
Outstanding Achievement in Lighting
Titanic, the Official Movie Tour
1985-1986 Emmy Award
Outstanding Lighting Direction
for a Mini Series or a Special
Neil Diamond....Hello Again