Popstars! The 90’s Musical

By Neil Gooding and Nicholas Christo

St Patrick’s College, Shorncliffe QLD

Popstars! was staged for the first time this year at nearly 20 schools across Australia and New Zealand. It is a celebration of the great decade of the 90’s driven by a soundtrack by artists such as The Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, N Sync, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Mariah Carey, MC Hammer and many more.

It’s a battle of ‘Boyband v Girlband’ to win the state talent show.

Popstars was a hit, with audience members enthralled by the story, genuinely connected to each character and singing along with the great 90’s soundtrack.

A 130 strong team of cast, band and production crew brought great creativity, energy and teamwork to this project.

Our performance space was divided into 3 areas.

• A central “main stage” with the band as a backline amongst 4 runs of vertical truss. Each truss piece was up-lit with LED cans, and hung with an LED colour strip and 2 Mac101 moving head LED’s. The centre 2 trusses each had a laser array mounted on top.

• 2 platforms (stage left and right) connected by short ramps had a LED screen array as a backdrop allowing us to project backdrops (garage, lounge room, park etc) for scenes played in isolation.

• Front of House Lighting Bar – 8 x 2K Fresnel for warm wash + 6 Mac 600 Moving head wash for colour/FX.

By using 3 areas with projected backdrops we could run the entire show with minimal use of 3D set pieces (a push on diner counter, a few tables, chairs and a couple of signs/banners) which meant the show flowed instantly from one scene to the next with zero down time.

Mr Geoff Samuels
 (Head of Culture)