The Strip’s latest immersive spectacle, Hope Road, a kinetic tribute to the life and legacy of Bob Marley, is now lighting up Las Vegas with energy, color, and a surprising amount of behind-the-scenes grit. At the center of it all: lighting designer Benny Kirkham, who marries an ambitious design with this multi-room theatrical experience.
Produced by the Emmy-winning team at Five Currents and directed by live entertainment visionary Amy Tinkham, Hope Road isn’t your typical Vegas residency. It’s a fully immersive, constantly moving, five-room show that fuses theatrical storytelling with concert lighting, interactive environments, aerial choreography, and precisely timed transitions—all without a single moment of downtime.
Kirkham, founder of Overnight Production, has long been known for his sharp technical instincts and emotionally resonant cueing. But Hope Road pushed his skill set to a new level. “We didn’t have a board op,” he recalls. “We had five rooms, each running its own timecode. Everything had to work—or recover gracefully when it didn’t,” says Kirkham. “Honestly, it was both a beautiful nightmare and an exciting challenge.”
With layered timelines, iPad-triggered cues, LED-saturated architecture, and thousands of pixel-mapped elements doubling as an interactive exhibit by day and a Jamaican themed dance hall after hours, the design demanded constant creativity and adaptability. “It’s not just one big room with a stage. It’s five environments running concurrently, and no one’s sitting still. The intricate dance between a moving audience, three casts of performers arriving at their presets, and the many crewmembers working together to make this whole production seamless is enough to do your head in” Kirkham explains. “It forced me to design differently—each room is an encapsulated show of its own while still part of the arc of this overall story. The bits have to fit together and blend one to the other as the audience moves or the illusion is broken.”
Kirkham collaborated closely with lighting programmer Rane Renshaw and the team at Solotech, who provided the gear that powered the experience— everything from Astera NYX Bulbs and Clay Paky Arollas to a custom pixel-mapped scenic tree that also serves as a performance stage. Control is executed via SMPTE entirely through the grandMA3 via discrete sequences per scene. The scenes themselves are triggered by stage managers on show control system iPads as they move with the audience “pulses” from space to space.
For Kirkham, Hope Road wasn’t just a design job; it was a full-circle moment. “It brought together everything I love: music, movement, complexity, and chaos,” he laughs. “I didn’t think I’d ever design a show like this. Now I want to design three more.”
Founded by Benny Kirkham in 1998, Overnight Production is a designforward lighting and programming company that specializes in making things look good and run smoothly. Learn more at www.overnightproduction.net
Five Currents is an award-winning production company behind some of the world’s most iconic live experiences, including Olympic ceremonies, global tours, and groundbreaking immersive events. www.fivecurrents.com
Amy Tinkham is a director and creative producer known for shaping large-scale concert tours and immersive productions for some of the world’s most celebrated artists. www.amytinkham.com
