Robe rides the storm in Friesland
- Details
Staged in the massive Saksen Hall at the WTC Expo in Leeuwarden, the city in the heart of Friesland, The Netherlands, the event was commissioned by the Royal Friesian Horse Studbook (Koninklijke Vereniging) and the Fader Horse Foundation and produced by Leeuwarden Friesland 2018 as part of the city and region’s year as European Capital of Culture.
Marc used 160 x Robe moving lights - BMFLs, LEDBeam 1000s and Spiiders - to help achieve the drama and breath-taking visual scenography needed to bring the huge 60-metre-deep and 80-metre-wide performance space alive. The narrative required the creation of multiple locations and environments.
Marc’s stylish lighting magic has appeared in theatres and been seen onstage worldwide. He’s also the co-designer (with Andre Beekmans from The Art of Light) for Dutch trance guru Armin van Buuren’s Armin Only series of world tours.
De Stormruiter was directed by Jos Thie, also a collaborator on Armin Only.
The vast arena was filled with a sand-like mulch for the horses which enthusiastically devoured lumens, so Marc needed seriously bright fixtures, and Robe’s BMFL was a natural choice.
The highly realistic set was designed by Harn Naaijer, also part of this regular creative team along with stage manager Margus Spekkers. It included an 80m long by 2.5m -wide scenic dike upstage - traversing the full width of the arena - which split in two and tracked on and offstage.
The 24 x BMFL Spots were positioned on nine overhead LX trusses, and all hooked into a tracking system following 12 of the principal actors.
With the low trim height, it was essential to have lightsources immediately above the cast as traditional FOH follow spots blasting in from the front would have looked ugly and splattered onto the projection screen.
The BMFL WashBeams were dotted all over the trusses and worked hard throughout the show doing all the ‘profile duties’ and more including plenty of specials.
The BMFL Blades were on the front trusses, where their precise shuttering was used for solos, specials and practicals. Marc commented that all the different version BMFLs work and combine well together
The two most downstage LX trusses both had returns onto stage at the corners - making them into a U shape, and the 12 x Spiider LED wash beams were hung along these returns.
Marc’s goal was to keep everything, including the set, looking naturalistic, so he added 180 x narrow beam PAR 64s to the plot, spread asymmetrically around the trusses, which played an important role in recreating night and day, sunshine, cloudy weather and general meteorology. All lighting equipment was supplied by Flashlight from Utrecht.
The original 12 De Stormruiter shows that were advertised sold out in three days, so another 12 were added and enjoyed by capacity audiences of 5,500 throughout the run.
(Jim Evans)
