The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
esparza 333
Broadway Star Joined: 7/24/07
#1The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 2:42pmThey can be very powerful sometimes and could end an intense or breathtaking scene. What do you think is the most effective blackout used in a production?
Current Avatar:The sensational Aaron Tveit in the soon to be hit production of Catch Me If You Can.
WiCkEDrOcKS
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/13/04
#2re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 2:45pm
The final scene of DOUBT immediately came to mind.
Even though I think it's a fade to black...does that count?
Updated On: 4/11/09 at 02:45 PM
esparza 333
Broadway Star Joined: 7/24/07
#2re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 2:46pmYes that does.
Current Avatar:The sensational Aaron Tveit in the soon to be hit production of Catch Me If You Can.
PiraguaGuy2
Broadway Legend Joined: 10/10/08
#3re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 2:47pm
In the Heights
Les Miserables
Formerly SirNotAppearing - Joined 3/08
TalkinLoud
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/3/09
#4re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 2:48pm
It's not quite the type of blackout you're talking about, but the blackout in In the Heights is breathtaking.
A more traditional one would be end of Exit the King. Magnificent.
RentBoy86
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/15/05
#5re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 3:21pm
What blackout in "In The Heights"? I saw it and I don't remember any big moment like that.
The end of "Exit the King" is awesome, even if I don't quite get it. Like, why does he gasp?
The end of "Mary Stuart" is great too. Where she's looking around confused and then it goes to black.
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#6re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 3:23pmRentBoy, the act one finale. The song is called Blackout.
#7re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 3:23pmTHE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA at the end of Act One. Don't want to spoil it, but anyone who saw the Broadway production in any form knows. A brilliant cliffhanger.
Tom's Cat
Leading Actor Joined: 2/21/09
#8re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 3:28pmThe most effective I've ever seen took place about a million years ago - at a regional theatre with a touring company of Jesus Chris Superstar. The show was done without scenery, costumes, or props. The cast wore denims and tshirts. They were so good that you were completely wrapped up in the show and I believe that props and costumes would have been a distraction. At any rate, at the end of the show, when it came time for the scourging to start, the theatre (which was an arena - with the audience wrapped around the circular stage) went completely black. You heard the whip and then you heard Jesus on the cross. At the moment of his death, just as John Nineteen Forty-one started, laser lights shot out from 4 points around the theatre and hit a mirrored disco ball which had come down over the center of the stage. Your pupils were dilated from sitting in the dark for so long and when the lights hit the slowly turning ball, it made waves of flickering lights sweep across the audience. It lasted until the end of the music. After the bare-bones plainness of the production and then the extended blackness - it made your heart jump into your throat. It was breathtaking!
Meow!
#9re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 4:31pmThe blackout at the end of the Mendes revival of Cabaret. Chilling.
sayokay
Understudy Joined: 10/10/08
#10re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 4:51pmThe blackout at the end of "So Much Better" in Legally Blonde for sure.
#11re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 5:35pmHahahaha sayokay that one is right up there with the blackout after Defying Gravity
Sondheim_Geek
Broadway Star Joined: 2/20/07
#12re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 5:42pm
Mendes Cabaret.
Doyle Sweeney.
RentBoy86
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/15/05
#13re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 5:59pm
yeah, Legally Blonde was a sure cliffhanger.
And, I guess "In The Heights" didn't really register with me. I just didn't see the hype. The choreography was good, but the story I could care less about.
#14re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 6:01pmI second the end of Act 1 in TLITP
MyLife
Broadway Star Joined: 12/2/06
#15re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 6:04pmI think people are talking about the actual blackout in In The Heights that occurs that leads into the song "Blackout." They are in the club fighting, and all of a sudden all the power goes out. Then they take out their cellphones as lights.... that blackout is breathtaking.
#16re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 6:06pmYeah In the Heights and Doubt were the first ones that came to me.
"If we don't live happily ever after at least we survive until the end of the week!" -Kermit the frog "I need the money... it costs a lot to look this cheap!" -Dolly P. "Oh please, Over at 'Gypsy' Patti LuPone hasn't even alienated her first daughter yet!" Mary Testa in "Xanadu" "...Like a drunk Chita Rivera!" Robin de Jesus in "In the Heights"
"B*tch, I don't know your life." -Xanadu After that if he still doesn't understand why you were uncomfortable and are now infuriated, kick him again but this time with Jazz Hands!!! -KillerTofu
WiCkEDrOcKS
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/13/04
#17re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 6:07pm
Can someone explain the end of Mendes' CABARET?
I think I asked this once already but I can't remember the response.
Updated On: 4/11/09 at 06:07 PM
#18re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 7:50pm
I'm not sure which one they're talking about, but two blackouts in Cabaret come to mind. The end of Act 1 when everyone is singing "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" and Cliff, Sally, and Fraulein Schneider look on from the stairs in horror. Then the emcee comes out in front of the orchestra, turns his back and moons the audience with a swastika on his butt, and then a blackout. Or the end of the show when the doors go away and the emcee and the entire cast stand in front of this huge white light, while the emcee reveals concentration camp clothes, and then the lights go out.
My favorite blackout is the end of the "If I Love You" scene from Carousel. I watched the video at Lincoln Center a few weeks ago (one of the most phenomenal productions I've ever seen, but that's another thing) and the way the blackout is done is incredible. Julie says her line, "It's just their time to, I reckon" and then she and Billy kiss passionately, practically in a death grip. The lights around them go out with the exception of a spotlight on them. As the music continues, the hill they are on slides back and the spotlight tightens in on them. It continues until the final note, when the spotlight tightens exclusively on their faces kissing, and the hill is all the way at the back of the stage, and then the lights go completely out. The same effect is used at the end of "What's the Use of Wond'rin" with Julie on the island.
"Sing the words, Patti!!!!" Stephen Sondheim to Patti LuPone.
#19re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 8:01pm
Well I can see how the blackout for So Much Better can be called effective. It kinda gave it that freeze frame feel in film when people jump or throw something in the air and the footage pauses (a la Mary Tyler Moore) which would be more uplifting then her jumping up and quickly coming right back down again. When you see it and the lights go out your eyes still hold that last image you see, which is her in the air.
I'll second the finale of Mendes' Cabaret
and add
The blackout before Moritz fires the gun in Spring Awakening
You're reminding me of people you hear at the movies asking questions every ten seconds, "Who is that? Why is that guy walking down the street? Who's that lady coming up to him? Uh-oh, why did that car go by? Why is it so dark in this theater?" - FindingNamo on strummergirl
"If artists were machines, then I'm just a different kind of machine...I'd probably be a toaster. Actually, I'd be a toaster oven because they're more versatile. And I like making grilled cheese" -Regina Spektor
"That's, like, twelve shows! ...Or seven." -Crazy SA Fangirl
"They say that just being relaxed is the most important thing [in acting]. I take that to another level, I think kinda like yawning and...like being partially asleep onstage is also good, but whatever." - Sherie Rene Scott
"If artists were machines, then I'm just a different kind of machine...I'd probably be a toaster. Actually, I'd be a toaster oven because they're more versatile. And I like making grilled cheese" -Regina Spektor
"That's, like, twelve shows! ...Or seven." -Crazy SA Fangirl
"They say that just being relaxed is the most important thing [in acting]. I take that to another level, I think kinda like yawning and...like being partially asleep onstage is also good, but whatever." - Sherie Rene Scott
BWayJunkie
Understudy Joined: 3/16/08
#20re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 8:24pmOne that I thought was particularly memorable to me was at the end of The Lion King; the blackout at the end of the Circle of Life Reprise that closes the show (before the curtain call). I thought it was very powerful because the entire cast was on stage singing the same note and then BLACKOUT. The power of it may also be due, in part, to the intense bass that the blackout is accompanied by (as well as at the end of Circle of Life at the start of the show).
#21re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 8:47pmA bizarre production of "Alice In Wonderland" that I saw at a high school had a pervy Lewis Carroll (played by a teacher!)stalking Alice and trying to rape her or what have you. I personally hated it, but it was well-acted-- I just thought the material was terrible. Anyway, the play ended with Alice in bed, then there was a blackout and a bloodcurdling scream. Definitely not your typical Alice in Wonderland experience. I don't think I slept for weeks.
In my pants, she has burst like the music of angels, the light of the sun! --Marius Pantsmercy
#22re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 8:50pmThe first thing that came to my mind was "In the Heights"
#23re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 9:09pmsame for me just In The Heights and Hair lol. but i agree with the one in Spring Awakening before Moritz shoots himself. that Jesus Christ Superstar blackout seems insane, i would have loved to see that.
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#24re: The Most Effective Blackout in a Production
Posted: 4/11/09 at 9:44pm
When I saw Spring Awakening for the first time I was so intensly focused on Moritz that when he drew out the gun to kill himself for the final time, I was scared to hear that gunshot. When the lights dimmed I was frightened and waiting to hear a gunshot, but it never came. And when the lights faded back on to show Melchior and Moritz's father, I was very emotional. I thought it was a very good effect. Definitely one of the best uses of it I've ever seen.
As far as best timed and looking Blackout. The one in DG is amazing, if the timing is just right. In my opinion. When the lights all fade so fast, and then a split second later those that focus on Elphaba fade. It just looks great!
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