Jack Cannon Captures Many Moods of Renee Rapp on Tour with CHAUVET Professional

	To create this mix of moods and emotions, Cannon changed up his light angles throughout the show, moving from strobes to silhouettes.

From the moment singer-actress Renee Rapp bounced on stage in Brisbane, at the iconic outdoor Riverstage for the start of her first Australian tour, the audience knew they were in for a rollicking experience. Especially given the strobing red light from the CHAUVET Professional Color STRIKE M fixtures in designer Jack Cannon's rig.

Artfully working a tightly focused PRG-supplied rig that featured only 60 fixtures, 16 of which were Color STRIKE M motorized strobe-washes, Cannon moved his lighting in sync with the myriad emotional moods conveyed by his client on stage.

"Our variation in looks wasn't just about holding visual interest, it was also about emotional pacing," says Cannon, who served as the lighting director and programmer on the Australian tour, working with programmers Taylor Jack Haynes and Jade Frasey. (He also designed the show for Juliet Blue Creative.)

"Renee's music swings between vulnerability and defiance, softness and ferocity," he explains. "I wanted the lighting to feel like it was breathing with her; tightening, expanding, revealing, concealing. The show wasn't a linear storyline, but it did arc emotionally. We'd move from intimacy to confrontation, from isolation to catharsis. The shifts in looks were really shifts in perspective, almost like different lenses on the same character."

To create this mix of moods and emotions, Cannon changed up his light angles throughout the show, moving from strobes to silhouettes. He also relied on varying color combinations and monochromatic palettes to reflect the theatrical quality of his client's performance. In his view, monochromatic moments created emotional clarity. "When everything is saturated in one tone; deep red, icy blue, stark white...there's no distraction," he notes. "Thus, red becomes obsession or rage; and blue isolation."

Discussing his use of light angles, he says: "By pushing light from behind and below, especially on the riser, I could turn Reneé into a shape -- an icon rather than just a person. It felt sculptural. Almost mythic. Then, when we'd bring the face back in, it was like reintroducing the human being inside that silhouette. The back and side lighting was built to feel defiant, almost confrontational. You're not being invited in softly. You're being dared to look."

Rapp, who first gained recognition for starring in the Broadway musical Mean Girls, brings a theatrical flair to her concert performances, a quality that was accentuated by Cannon's lighting. "Renee's theatrical background is part of what makes her such a compelling performer, she understands intention. I leaned into that by treating certain songs like scenes," says Cannon. "Theatricality, for me, isn't about making it look like a Broadway show, it's about using light to frame performance as storytelling. Every cue had to feel motivated, not just musical but emotional."

Cannon strove to mirror his client's complexity through contrast in his lighting, moving hard edges to softness, blinding brightness to near darkness, creating looks that felt like they could snap at any moment. Helping him achieve this were his Color STRIKE Ms which were positioned in a line on the downstage truss, and a line on the upstage floor.

"Strobing wasn't done just for impact, it was a punctuation," says Cannon. "Renee's music has these explosive emotional peaks. A proper strobe let us fracture time in those moments. It turned movement into snapshots. It heightened adrenaline. It created a sense of instability in the room, making it feel unstable for just a second."

This strobing made the audience feel, "as if they were inside the surge of the song," concludes Cannon.