Lighting was designed by Michel Jacobs, a freelance LD with a track record of lighting more unusual or offbeat performances and a penchant for less commercial sectors, and Timothy Haesevoets from Leopoldsburg City Theatre.
The two both agreed that Robe moving lights - specifically BMFL Blades and DL4Ss were the way forward to light this challenging scenario.
Of 14 x BMFL Blades, eight were positioned along the front of the grandstand seating, with six at the back up on the third floor of the building pointing out and down through the windows from which the glass was removed. They were rigged 3 a side on short trusses on stands.
The front BMFL Blades were used to cover the building with crisp gobos and rich saturated colours - their intensity had great impact even on the red brick building - another notoriously difficult surface for any type of projection to register.
"We needed a high output fixture with shutters, and right now, there's nothing better than the BMFL Blade," stated Michel who had first used them in a black box theatre show earlier in the year.
The 12 x DL4Ss were also picked as a versatile, bright, feature-packed LED profile fixture that is designed for theatrical environments and rigged on six T-towers dotted around the rear of the performance space which meant they could light in either direction - backwards or forwards - as well as illuminating the trees bordering the performance space. This saved on additional foliage wash lights.
The DL4Ss were purchased especially for the show by rental company Demon and delivered via Robe's Benelux distributor Controllux in time for De Groote Rappel.
Timothy and Michel also wanted to maximise the use of LED where possible, and most of the other lighting kit utilized in the show was LED based. Running on generator power, all current savings helped.
Crafting an ambience for the piece was also about over-layering different textures of light which was often a very subtle process.
Michel and Timothy had seen DL4Ss in action on other shows and thought they would be perfect near-field profiles complimenting the BMFL Blades.
The DL4Ss produced smooth, even back washes and general illumination, side lighting and secondary gobo layering. The CTO white in these and the BMFL Blades was useful to bring a period feel to certain scenes and capture the tungsten ambience that the director really wanted.
Four Robe Pointes were rigged to the grandstand for front key lighting, sometimes used with their frost filters for covering wider distances and chorus scenes with clean, well-defined light.
Operating lights for the show was Kenan Akus using a ChamSys MQ100 with two fader wings, and Kristof van Broekhoven looked after the sound.
(Jim Evans)
