Federico Bellone was asked to direct the show. "To set the scene, I decided to focus on two elements: the theme of fear, a feeling shared by all the characters in the two rival groups, the Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks, and red, the colour that has become a trademark of the musical, along with the five iron fire escape staircases which link the various levels of the scenery."
The work of the creative staff involved in producing the musical was focused on these pieces of scenery. Valerio Tiberi was asked to design the show lighting.
Did the presence of the fire escape staircases and their movements on stage make the lighting design very difficult? There are shadows everywhere. "Yes. So I decided to use them. At different times during the show, there are scenes with shadows projected onto the backdrop. In the last scene, one of the most emotionally difficult moments in the show, we decided to turn off the video projection, as it seemed too invasive, too beautiful and too well defined. At that moment, I was able to project the long shadow of the towers onto the black backcloth."
"I am happy with the overall set-up I gave the lighting design. I preferred to use incandescent lamps and especially side-lighting in the wings. I pointed the whole sequence of lights in various directions with various incident angles, from the ground up to 13 feet up, along the side towers, or vertical trusses.
"There are 8 in total: a sequence of two beam shapers, a B.Eye K10, 4 PAR lamps, another 2 beam shapers, an Alpha Profile 700, and lastly another B.Eye K10 on the top of the truss."
The lighting programmer used a GrandMa 2 light desk. Marco Moccia's Leader Sound provided both the sound and lighting systems'
(Jim Evans)
