Cory Pattak brings Vari-Lite to Broadway

Photo: Cory Pattak

Lighting Designer Cory Pattak lit up Broadway with production luminaires from Vari-Lite. Vari-Lite fixtures were featured on the 2024 productions of The Great Gatsby and A Wonderful World, with around 60 Vari-Lite VL2600 SE Profiles on The Great Gatsby and 50 VL2600 Profiles plus 12 VL3600 Profile IP fixtures on A Wonderful World.

“It was a big year for me,” said Pattak. “I made my Broadway design debut in the fall of 2023 with Spamalot, followed by Gatsby and A Wonderful World in 2024. All three shows came out of PRG and I worked with them to find fixtures that would work for my needs and within the budget.”

“My approach to lighting is not one of subtlety,” explained Pattak. “I’m not great at disappearing into the background. All three shows feature big bold looks with lots of colour, lots of movement and require the lighting to do a fair amount of heavy lifting. I like to do a lot of shutter and iris gags with fast opens and closes, and I find the VLs to have some of the fastest-moving parts on the market.” Pattak also praised Vari-Lite’s full frame shutters and broad zoom range, claiming they opened a lot of creative possibilities.

Output was also a major requirement for Pattak. “As is becoming more and more the case, all three shows also utilized LED walls, which have a big impact on my work. I needed fixtures that could compete with the brightness of the LED tiles, but I didn’t have the pipe space for the biggest lights out there. So I added Vari-Lite, because I really like their brightness compared to other comparable fixtures, and I don’t feel like I lose that brightness when I put in a colour,” he added.

As with any Broadway production, colour rendering was vital for the production design as well. Pattak added, “I really like the CTO colour of the VLs. Some manufacturers’ CTO is a little greener, but the VLs are a little pinker, which I prefer for lighting skin tones.”

“The VLs did everything I needed them to do,” concluded Pattak. “On all three shows, they are the workhorse fixture and they do everything from people lighting to scenic washes to flashier eye candy. With great colours, a lot of gobo slots, and a quiet operation, they were a great addition to the production.”

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