Jane Cox deploys GLP’s X5 Dot Wash in its North American theatrical debut for Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show
When Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show opened at Studio 54 in New York this spring with a star-studded cast and award-winning crew, the production was bound for success. It has lived up to that hype, having been nominated for nine different Tony Awards in 2026, including Best Lighting Design of a Musical. The production also marked the North American theatrical debut of GLP’s X5 Dot Wash, as lighting designer Jane Cox deployed 30 units as part of a 140-fixture GLP rig.
Cox was to create what she describes as a “massive, ridiculous queer utopia”, which was to look and feel as if the musical’s zany characters decorated the set themselves. Tinfoil, glitter, cheap rope light and shiny scenic materials set the visual register, with a design that activates not just the stage but the whole room.
The production’s aesthetic posed a specific challenge. The saturated, flat-colour look Cox describes as a “Berlin nightclub circa 1980” needed to coexist with clean white light on the performers’ faces. It was that tension which shaped every fixture choice.
Associate lighting designer Nick Solyom handled gear specification alongside Cox and rental company PRG. He was one of four associates on the production, joined by Oona Curley as theatre associate, Erica Maholmes on spots, and Stoli Stolnack on atmospherics. Solyom’s path to choosing the X5 Dot Wash began with a recommendation from Neil Austin, the lighting designer behind Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, who had been using the fixture on PADDINGTON The Musical.
Neil originally messaged me saying, ‘I have the new GLP X5 Dot Wash on Paddington, and they’re spectacular,’” says Solyom. Seeing it at LDI confirmed the appeal. “At a show where everything is getting bigger, I was there to find the small things I can hide,” he says. “The X5 Dot Wash really stood out in that respect.”
The case for the X5 Dot Wash centred on the footlight. For Cox, this fixture has a specific theatrical form. It was something invented to tell stories on a stage. The set design called for decorative exposed filament bulbs along the front lip of the stage, but the lighting design required something with greater control and the ability to cast shadow. “Director Sam Pinkleton and I were pretty clear that we needed the aesthetic of a single footlight because the dots give you a shadow,” says Cox. “LED tape strips just don’t do that.”
Solyom recessed the X5 Dot Wash units just behind each filament bulb, which yielded a few unique creative options. “We were able to make it look like the light was coming from the filament light bulbs,” he says, “Or, we could leave those bulbs at a glow and have the punch come from the X5 Dots. They were recessed just enough so that the audience couldn’t see them.”
The footlight aesthetic was critical in the “Time Warp”, one of the show’s most iconic sequences. “We wanted the opening image to look like something from a 1930s horror movie,” says Cox. “So we knew we had to have single footlights for that. And the X5 Dot Wash did exactly what I needed them to do.”
Being able to use lights individually provided creative control for Cox and the crew too. During Frank-N-Furter’s freeze sequence, specific performers could be kept lit while others were not. “I was able to use the GLP X5 Dot Wash directly in front of each cast member to light them individually,” says Cox. Further units are deployed in alcoves flanking the proscenium for the narrator’s surprise appearances. “The combination of the sophistication of the colour, the punch, and the size can’t be beat.”
With no prior rental history for the X5 Dot Wash in North America, PRG purchased the fixtures specifically for the production, a process that production electrician Jeff Dodson helped execute.
Beyond the X5 Dot Wash, the production draws on four further GLP products across 140 fixtures in total. Distributed throughout the auditorium, 30 impression X4 XL workhorse units act as floor washes and cross-light washes. “I was very impressed by the level of brightness I could get across a really sophisticated range of colour,” says Cox.
Two vertical strips of impression X4 Bar 20, with one on each side, just behind the proscenium, are in Cox’s words, “maybe doing the most important work in the show.” 29 units in total light the show curtain, traveller, legs, borders and all the shiny scenic masking, while offering near-unlimited flexibility for lighting performers from the side. “X4 Bars are like the light of my dreams,” says Cox. “They do everything.”
12 JDC1 Hybrid Strobe units, positioned just outside the proscenium and facing the audience, are so integrated into the production’s visual language that Cox describes them as part of the scenery. Programmer David Arch uses their pixel control for dot-pattern effects alongside the show’s high-intensity strobe hits. “I’m never doing a show without a JDC strobe again,” says Cox.
To complete the setup, two GLP Force 120 fans, all mounted to suggest they are a part of the venue’s HVAC infrastructure, deliver a major scene transition between the castle and laboratory sets, coming to life in saturated green at variable speed. These fixtures, by Cox’s account, are the thing her industry colleagues most frequently discuss after seeing the show.
For Cox, the result in the totality of this production speaks as much to GLP’s design as it does to the way lighting designers use the fixtures. “There’s something about the way that GLP is thinking about space and architecture, both in terms of how the product looks when you can see it, and how light appears in space,” states Cox. “Those things are so beautifully designed.”
