FEATURE RAINING CATS AND DOGS DAVID GALLO AND PHISH SURPRISE FANS /// VIVECA GARDINER 64 RAINING CATS AND DOGS DAVID GALLO AND PHISH SURPRISE FANS /// VIVECA GARDINER MARCH 2017 \\\ 65 FEATURE etrichor. Tis rare and evocative word defnes the smell afer rain hits dry earth. It’s also the name of a new song Phish lead singer Pand guitar player Trey Anastasio was per- forming with orchestras in early 2016 and planned to put on the next Phish album, Big Boat, which was scheduled for record- ing and release later in the year. Clocking in at 13 to 17 minutes (many Phish songs vary with each performance), it would be the frst new “epic” jam the band had released in years, and the band antici- pated a big reaction. In March, when Anastasio called long- time collaborator David Gallo, asking him to create and direct their upcoming New Year’s Eve “gag” at Madison Square Garden, he made three requests: 1. Te band should never stop playing. 2. Tere should be a giveaway for fans. 3. Te song would be “Petrichor.” Phish has a long tradition of playful pranks, especially during New Year’s Eve performances. The band has performed every December 31 since 1989, except for the two years when they’d split up. Gallo was excited. He’d created the gags in 2009 (shooting drummer Jon Fishman out a cannon), 2010 (a multinational cast singing “Meat Stick” in many languages), 2011 (aerialists rising from the crowd), 2012 (turning the arena foor into a massive gar- den/golf party), and 2013 (recreating the band’s original truck and equipment). He hadn’t worked with the band for the last two years but was happy to resume the col- laboration. The request was a tall order, though. The first two parts were easy: Phish “phans” come for the music. Concerts last for hours, and the band members seldom stop to introduce songs or banter. In some past gags, the band had acted out stories or switched to recorded tracks while they DAVID GALLO 66 In March 2016, Phish lead singer Trey Anastasio asked longtime collaborator David Galloto create and direct their upcoming New Year’s Eve “gag” at Madison Square Garden. MARCH 2017 \\\ 67 FEATURE Gallo assembled a creative team that included lighting designer Mike Baldassari, who worked with Phish’s own LD Chris Kuroda and programmer Andrew Gifn, choreographers Kuperman Brothers, and costume designer Diana Susanto. JEREMY SCOTT 68 prepared something secret, but Gallo and Future Afairs on infatables. Te team also Anastasio agreed that the gag should com- hired 16 dancers and one juggler, without plement the live music, not interrupt it. Te telling them what the job was. To preserve the giveaway would be a surprise gift to the surprise for fans, Gallo was adamant about crowd. But what about “Petrichor”? maintaining secrecy on all gag preparations. Anastasio composed “Petrichor” Over the next few months, Gallo, Anas- between 2012 and 2014, while he was work- tasio, and the team worked on many itera- ing on the Broadway show, Hands On A tions of the gag, creating and discarding idea Hard Body. In 2014, he began performing afer idea to sculpt the perfect show. Some instrumental versions of the song with sym- parts never changed. phony orchestras, but it didn’t appear as a The piece included a “muscular” and Phish song until the release of the band’s acrobatic dance piece, dark with a lot of 2016 record, Big Boat, which is the first group synchronization. time it was heard with lyrics. The song is At least one performer represented a constant contradiction; its shifing mel- an everyman fgure, à la Magritte’s paint- odies are bright and beautiful, including a ing Te Son Of Man. Susanto realized that go-go dance break, but its lyrics evoke the vision with unisex suits and masks that loneliness of the lost (“we’ll fnd a way back obscured the dancers’ identities but allowed home”), even verging on apocalyptic des- them to see enough to execute the difcult peration (“there’s no more future and no dance maneuvers safely. She also created a more past”)—not exactly an obvious choice second set of costumes that looked almost for a New Year’s Eve party song. identical, but were actually rigged to strings, Fortunately, Gallo found the song inspir- by which an offstage assistant could pull ing and decided to portray the struggles each costume off its performer, revealing of an individual, metaphorically caught in the third costume of the night: yellow party the rain, struggling to get home. At mid- clothes. The code name for the project, night, the band played “Auld Lang Syne,” “Green Apple,” also came from Magritte. As and then, the “clouds” broke and the “sun” the apple hides Te Son Of Man’s face, it hid came out. To balance the intensity of “Pet- the secret of the gag during planning. richor” and break into a party mode, Gallo Dramatic, theatrical lighting focused on chose to follow “Auld Lang Syne” with “Suzy the gag and diferentiated it from the rest Greenberg,” a rocking dance number, at of the concert. Baldassari created a design the beginning of which the dancers magi- and ordered special instruments to add cally transformed from identical corporate to Phish’s existing package and Madison drones to individual people in bright yellow, Square Garden’s in-house lighting. sunshine-colored party clothes. At midnight, a zillion balloons fell. In addition to working closely with the Event production company Future Afairs band, Gallo assembled a creative team that planned the drop closely, coordinating the included lighting designer Mike Baldassari, aesthetics with Gallo, and the logistics with who worked with Phish’s own LD Chris Phish’s production manager Jesse Sandler Kuroda and programmer Andrew Giffin, and Madison Square Garden’s operations choreographers Kuperman Brothers, and and event staf. costume designer Diana Susanto. He also Other aspects of the gag changed con- collaborated with Tait Towers on the set and stantly during the months of creation. For MARCH 2017 \\\ 69 FEATURE example, the creative team developed and then abandoned an entire shadow theatre element and multiple staging ideas. Afer considering extending a thrust ramp through the arena foor or surrounding the stage with platforms on elevators so the dancers could work on multiple lev- els, fall down chasms, and climb over each other to ascend walls, the team simplifed the design down to adding an extension on the forestage for the dancers to use during “Petrichor” and platform risers on and behind the main stage for the addi- tional musicians and for the dancers to use during “Suzy Greenburg.” The technical feat that eventually became perhaps the defining moment of the gag was actually a relatively late addi- tion: 16 umbrellas dancing above the for- estage. Tait Towers’ nano winches can carry power and data to whatever fxture is attached to them and can be controlled individually to adjust speed, direction, and in the case of the umbrellas, color. Each customized umbrella was outfitted with two RGB LEDs, one pointing up to illu- minate the dome and the other pointing down to show the dancer beneath it. Once Tait and Gallo fnalized umbrellas with the proper weight, colors, lighting units, and classic hook-handle, Kuperman Brothers choreographed a dance to synchronize the dancers with their movement. Given the title of the song, Gallo wanted to incorporate rain, but he and the team went through multiple versions of what that might be, deciding on and then rejecting real rain on the entire audience (bad for the hockey ice under the foor) and metallic con- fetti (too sticky and difcult to clean) among other ideas. He also wanted it to “rain cats and dogs” as the perfect comic afermath of the moody dance piece in the rain, but plush animals were ruled out for safety reasons. JEREMY SCOTT 70 The technical feat that eventually became perhaps the defning moment of the gag was actually a relatively late addition: 16 umbrellas dancing above the forestage. MARCH 2017 \\\ 71 FEATURE 3D RIG DRAWING JULY 20, 2016 SIMULATION FOR CANADIAN FALLS OPTION COURTESY OF DAVID GALLO DESIGN 72 MARCH 2017 \\\ 73 FEATURE Terry Mulryan Toomey of Future Afairs solved both problems. For the cats and dogs, she sourced inflatables and created special nets to hide them from the audience while suspended, and for the real rain, she suggested water marbles, the polymer glob- ules used mostly for industrial landscaping. Nobody had ever dropped them before, so Future Afairs ran tests to fgure out how to hydrate them enough but not too much, how to drop them, how to control the fall rate, and perhaps most importantly, timing. She also worked closely with Sandler to fnd room and truss to fit everything among the lighting equipment and winches. Tey managed to fit 16 tumblers for the water marbles and lined the bottom so the mar- bles wouldn’t fall out until the tumblers started to rotate, and they taped over about a third of the perforations to limit the num- ber that could fall at once. Afer months of planning and weeks of dance rehearsals in a New York studio, the team had its only chance to put it all together, ten days before New Year’s Eve. The Phish team set up the stage, equip- ment, and lights at Rock Lititz Studio in Lititz, Pennsylvania. The rehearsals did not go as planned. Although the lighting team had stayed up almost all night programming, they weren’t close to fnished when the rest of the team arrived, and of course, they needed to fne- tune many cues once the dancers rehearsed.