ABOUT HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD
Originally a two-show play that premiered in London ’ s West End in 2016 , the theatrical production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was written by Jack Thorne and directed by John Tiffany , and based on an original story the two co-wrote with J . K . Rowling .
The story takes place 19 years after the events in the final novel in the original series , Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows . In it , Albus Severus Potter , the son of Harry and Ginny Potter , is attending his first year at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry .
There , he befriends Scorpius Malfoy , the son of Harry ’ s rival , Draco . Hoping to right an old injustice , Albus and Scorpius use a Time-Turner ( i . e . time machine ) but end up unleashing a cascading series of dangerous events .
The play premiered at the Lyric Theatre on Broadway in 2018 and later in Melbourne , San Francisco , and Hamburg . The original two-show production has been condensed into a three-and-a-half-hour one-show play that is also currently running in Toronto and Tokyo .
The Toronto production was originally scheduled to premiere in 2020 , but was delayed for two years because of the pandemic . The Canadian premiere eventually took place on May 31 , 2022 , and officially opened on June 19
th and was recently extended by an additional 12 weeks , with performances through March 19 , 2023 . As of mid-August 2022 , over 130,000 tickets had been sold for the show at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre . With the extended run , over 150,000 more tickets are expected to be sold .
ONLINE READERS CLICK HERE fandom and ownership that people have over the characters and the stories , and the love for them and what they stand for . Luckily , I was immune to that and was just scratching my head going , ‘ How the hell do I do this ?’”
Thankfully for himself and Harry Potter fans , Austin and the rest of the team more than pulled it off .
Austin was enlisted to do lighting design for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by the play ’ s co-producer , Sonia Friedman , and director , John Tiffany , having worked with the producer previously .
“ Your career up to then had been preparing you for it , but nothing can prepare you for it , if you get my drift ,” he says about the play ’ s visual scale . “ It has elements of everything else you ’ ve ever worked on , except that it ’ s bigger and more ambitious . It ’ s crazier in its ambition than anything else I ’ ve ever worked on . I ’ ve done shows with little bits of illusion and magic before , but never with a bit of magic in nearly every scene — never so much to hide , never so many moments of spectacle within a piece .”
To pull it off , Harry Potter and the Cursed Child does something that Austin loves , which is combine both age-old and ultra-modern theatre techniques and technology .
“ Some of it is technology from 150 years ago . Some of this was used in the Egyptian Hall in London by Maskelyne and Cooke . Some of it is old illusion that a Victorian magician would go , ‘ Aha , I recognize that .’ It ’ s kind of wonderful to introduce that world back to a modern audience who hadn ’ t seen it before and are wowed by it ,” says Austin . But of course , those classic theatrical tricks are combined with today ’ s technology , such as projection mapping , for example , which is used make the entire set ripple when the characters travel back in time . But other technology had to be specially designed for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and is now benefitting other productions , as well .
THOMAS MITCHELL BARNET AS SCORPIUS MALFOY & LUKE KIMBALL AS ALBUS POTTER
There is one now-popular lighting fixture that is widely used on the set of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child , and which Austin heavily influenced with an eye towards the show . Back in September of 2015 , he was at the PLASA Show in London , where he saw an old friend , Mark Ravenhill , at the GLP booth . With him , Ravenhill had a prototype of the GLP Impression X4 Bar . A few years later , the X4 Bars would be a popular light in theatre for its ability to function both as a narrow angle light curtain or a wide-angle wash light . In 2015 , however , it was still a work in progress .
“ I knew Mark from his years back with Martin when he ’ d been developing the TW1 and he ’ d been very open to people from theatre saying what they thought about it . I always found him responsive and helpful ,” says Austin . Around that time , with The Cursed Child on the horizon , he knew he needed a batten fixture that could fill the role of a traditional digital light curtain and thought the X4 Bar had that potential .
Long story short , he tested one out , liked its overall potential , but did not sugar-coat his feedback to Ravenhill . “ I went back to him and I said , ‘ Hey , look , you ’ ve got the wrong source , you ’ ve got only one axis of movement , which is fine , but you do it jerkily and that ’ s not fine . It dims like a piece of shit . The bottom-end steps like buggery — it ’ s a nightmare . And when you ’ re at tight focus , you ’ ve got chromatic aberration from the edge of the lens , which is really annoying . You always want to be in that tight focus and yet , you ’ ve got this blue or brown edge ,’” Austin recalls with a laugh . “ And Mark ’ s sort of going , ‘ Oh , right . So , you love it but you hate every single thing about it ?’”
The good news was Austin had six months before gear needed to be finalized for The Cursed Child and he thought Ravenhill and GLP could solve those problems before then . “ We did all sorts of different versions of firmware and they worked very hard on the dimming until it eventually got to a stage where it was smooth enough . We talked about a different source , which we didn ’ t manage in time for London , but we managed in time for some of the other productions , which is why the world can now buy the RGB yellow chip theatre
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