When Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show opened this spring at New York's Studio 54 with an all-star cast and an award-winning creative team, success seemed all but guaranteed.
The production has more than lived up to expectations, earning nine nominations at the 2026 Tony Awards—the most prestigious honours in American theatre—including Best Lighting Design of a Musical. The show also marked the North American theatre debut of GLP's X5 Dot Wash fixture, with lighting designer Jane Cox incorporating 30 units into a GLP lighting rig comprising 140 fixtures.
Cox set out to create what she describes as a "huge, delirious queer utopia", with an aesthetic suggesting that the musical's eccentric characters had decorated the stage themselves. Aluminium foil, glitter, inexpensive string lights and shimmering scenic materials combine to create a visual concept that envelops not only the stage but the entire auditorium.
The production's visual style posed a very specific challenge. The highly saturated, flat-colour aesthetic, which Cox describes as "a Berlin nightclub around 1980", had to coexist with clean, white light on the performers' faces. That tension ultimately determined the selection of every lighting fixture.
Associate lighting designer Nick Solyom was responsible for selecting the equipment alongside Cox and rental company PRG. He was one of four associate designers on the production, together with Oona Curley (associate scenic designer), Erica Maholmes (followspot associate) and Stoli Stolnack (atmospheric effects). Solyom's decision to use the X5 Dot Wash began with a recommendation from Neil Austin, lighting designer for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, who was already using the fixture on PADDINGTON The Musical.
Neil wrote to me saying, 'We've got the new X5 Dot Wash on Paddington, and it's spectacular'. Seeing the fixture at the LDI trade show confirmed his enthusiasm. At a time when everything keeps getting bigger, I was looking for compact fixtures that I could conceal. The X5 Dot Wash stood out for exactly that reason, recalls Solyom.
The strongest argument in favour of the X5 Dot Wash was its application as a footlight. For Cox, this type of fixture has a theatrical identity: it was created to tell stories on stage. The scenic design called for visible decorative filament bulbs along the front edge of the stage, but the lighting design required a system offering greater control and the ability to cast defined shadows. "Director Sam Pinkleton and I were absolutely certain that we needed the look of individual footlights because a single point source creates distinct shadows", explains Cox. "LED strips simply don't achieve that effect".
Solyom recessed the X5 Dot Wash fixtures directly behind each filament bulb, allowing the team to create a range of visual effects. "We could make the audience believe the light was coming from the filament bulbs", he explains. "Or keep those bulbs glowing dimly while letting the X5 Dot Wash fixtures provide the actual intensity. Because they were slightly recessed, the audience couldn't see them".
The footlight aesthetic proved particularly important during Time Warp, one of the show's most iconic sequences. "We wanted the opening image to evoke a 1930s horror film", says Cox. "We knew we needed individual footlights to achieve that effect. The X5 Dot Wash did exactly what we needed".
The ability to control each fixture independently also gave Cox and her team tremendous creative flexibility. During the scene in which Frank-N-Furter immobilises the cast, specific performers could remain illuminated while others disappeared into darkness. "I was able to use one X5 Dot Wash in front of each cast member to light them individually", says Cox. Additional units were installed in the alcoves on either side of the proscenium for the narrator's surprise appearances. "The combination of colour quality, output and size is hard to beat".
As the X5 Dot Wash had not yet been added to rental inventories in North America, PRG purchased the fixtures specifically for this production, in a process that also involved production head electrician Jeff Dodson.
In addition to the X5 Dot Wash, the production features four other GLP products, bringing the total system to 140 fixtures. Positioned throughout the auditorium, 30 impression X4 XL fixtures are used to create washes and cross-lighting. "I was amazed by the amount of brightness I could achieve while maintaining incredibly sophisticated colour rendering", says Cox.
Two vertical columns of impression X4 Bar 20 fixtures, positioned on either side of the stage just behind the proscenium, perform what Cox describes as "perhaps the most important job in the entire show". A total of 29 fixtures illuminate the main curtain, the traveller, the legs, the borders and every shimmering scenic element, while also providing unlimited flexibility for side-lighting the performers. "The X4 Bar fixtures are my dream lights", says Cox. "They do everything".
Twelve JDC1 Hybrid Strobe units, installed just downstage of the proscenium and aimed at the audience, are so deeply integrated into the production's visual aesthetic that Cox considers them part of the scenery itself. Programmer David Arch takes advantage of their pixel control to create sparkling point-light effects in addition to the show's powerful strobe moments. "I'll never do another show without a JDC strobe", Cox says.
Completing the installation are two GLP Force 120 fans, integrated into the set to appear as though they are part of the theatre's HVAC system. They play a central role in one of the production's key scene transitions between the castle and the laboratory. During the sequence, they come to life with intense green lighting while operating at variable speeds. According to Cox, these fixtures generate more comments from fellow lighting professionals after seeing the production than any other element.
For Jane Cox, the final result reflects both GLP's design philosophy and the way lighting designers make use of its tools.
There's something about the way GLP thinks about space and architecture, both in the physical design of its products when they remain visible and in the way light occupies space. Everything is designed with extraordinary beauty, she concludes.
Photo credit: Joan Marcus
