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Steven Young turns to Elation’s Paragon and Proteus Odeon luminaires for “Mean Girls”

Steven Young, Principal Designer and Director of Design at Visual Terrain, brought the musical “Mean Girls” to life in La Mirada, California, using a dynamic rig of Elation lighting solutions, including the Paragon S LED profile, along with Proteus Odeon, and Pulse Bar fixtures. The production took place at the 1,250-seat La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, home to McCoy Rigby Entertainment’s annual season of theatrical productions.

“Mean Girls” ran on Broadway for over two years and has since toured extensively. For Young, whose collaboration with McCoy Rigby Entertainment spans two decades, the comedic production is one he has engaged with for years. Young’s prior work on “The King and I” at La Mirada in 2023, in which he used Elation’s Proteus Lucius LED profile moving head, directly influenced the theatre’s decision to invest in Proteus Odeon fixtures the following year. The Odeons were sold to the theatre by Pacific Coast Entertainment.

La Mirada’s ongoing technical upgrades are led by Master Electrician Melissa “Mo” Skau, who has been instrumental in modernizing the venue’s production infrastructure. “There’s been a diligent effort on Mo’s part to create a better working environment for visiting designers”, says Young, “and this was part of that effort.”

To light “Mean Girls”, Young deployed a blend of house and rental inventory: seventeen Proteus Odeon house fixtures installed across four electrics, six Paragon S fixtures rented from BCT Entertainment positioned on stage booms, and Pulse Bar units supplied by Elation for evaluation and creative use.

The Proteus Odeon were a central element of the design. “We worked in CRI Flex mode, which was really helpful because the project included both naturalistic looks and more heightened theatrical moments with increased brightness”, says Young. “The difference isn’t as important when lighting scenery, but when it comes to skin tones, color rendering becomes much more critical.”

Young used most of the Odeon’s design tools and graphics to shape environments and transitions, including framing, gobos, and animation. “The framing shutters allowed us to create ‘boxes’ that we used extensively, for example in the high school classroom space, runways, and other small areas. We also used all of the gobos that came with it and tried to vary the looks as much as possible.” A key moment in the show, the song “World Burn”, was enhanced using the fixture’s animation wheel to create fire-like movement across the stage, while frosts delivered a soft wash that Young says “came in very handy”.

The Paragon S fixtures were used as side lighting from booms, three per side. “The Odeons were too heavy for boom positions, so the Paragon S was the perfect solution for the tight set - smaller and about half the weight”, says Young. Used in extended mode, the Paragons provided gobo projection and flexible focus control.

“We were able to cut the light off the floor but still light the actors and some of the scenery with them”, Young explains. “It was nice to have sharp, focused gobos on people during transitions, and then when the scene started, we would throw those gobos out of focus so that they created a soft wash. It was great to use some of the fixture’s focus capabilities to help reinforce the story.”

Young describes how the Pulse Bar fixtures were used to recreate and reinterpret one of the show’s most iconic visual moments: “In the original Broadway production, there’s a moment where the main character photocopies different parts of a book, and the light from the Xerox machine was such an iconic look. We wanted to do something different, so we used a phone with a giant strobe flash from the Pulse Bars across the stage. The actor was lit with a bit of sidelight and a follow spot, and then that flash would hit.” The moment was executed in white light using the Pulse Bar’s cool white LEDs, while elsewhere in the show Young also used their RGB capabilities to color other scenes.

Color play was also a defining element of the design, particularly the show’s signature pink palette. “There are so many variations of pink in the show”, says Young. “We used eight different shades, ranging from very deep pink to very light pinks, so that we were so close to skin tones it was barely noticeable. The color could be very bold, but also incredibly subtle. We really had to mix those and the Elation fixtures did that wonderfully.”

“Mean Girls” ran from April 11 through May 3, 2026. Alongside Steven Young and Melissa Skau, the crew included Madeline Miller (Assistant Lighting Designer), Dana Solimando (Director/Choreographer), Rodrigo Varandas (Associate Director/Choreographer), Stephen Gifford (Scenic Design), David Murakami (Projection Design) and Adam Ramirez (Costume Coordinator).

(Photos: Stephen Gifford/Jason Niedle)

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