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Hairspray On Broadway

Broadway has been doing brisk business recently adapting film classics for the musical stage to critical acclaim and rave reviews. The new musical "Hairspray," based on the John Waters film of the same name, is no exception. Set in the early '60s Baltimore, "Hairspray" is full of teased bouffant hairstyles and brightly colored costumes. Lighting designer Kenneth Posner and scenic designer David Rockwell were challenged with creating a set that complemented and enhanced - not competed with - the action on stage. And their designs do just that, elevated to a new dynamic level with colorful LED lighting from Color Kinetics.

The set features a unique backdrop of points of color-changing light reminiscent of the Lite-Brite toy popular in the late '60s. Posner decided to use Color Kinetics® C-75 fixtures, nearly 600 in all, to create those points of colored light. The low power draw, very little heat production and solid-state design of Color Kinetics' intelligent LED light fixtures work perfectly in the demanding environment of a Broadway stage production. More importantly, Color Kinetics fixtures provide extremely bright light output while offering the intelligent control necessary to achieve Posner's inspired vision. Using a Whole Hog professional lighting console, Posner programmed the Color Kinetics fixtures to generate continually morphing and changing light, transforming the backdrop into unique patterns and shapes of richly colored light during various scenes.

With all the success the show is experiencing, it looks as though Color Kinetics LED illumination technology may be Broadway's newest star!