Magically green: grandMA controls Wickeds German performance

Friday, November 30, 2007 || MA Lighting

Green is the commanding colour on the set of Wicked The Witches of Oz in the Palladium theatre, Stuttgart, Germany. Elphaba, leading actress, and good bad witch of the Broadway Musical was born with this colour of skin. A fact which makes her dubious to most of her fellow men but by now fills two highly successful books. What ended in the 1900 published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz begins in Wicked The Life and Times of The Wicked Witch of the West of 1995 the story of the green witch. Similar to its forerunner, which inspired one of the most famous Hollywood films, the second book gave the idea for one of the most successful musicals of all times (amongst others three Tony Awards, six Drama Desk Awards, one Eddy Award). And because of this the stage of the Palladium transforms every evening into a mythic world which is populated by witches, flying monkeys, a giant dragon and a billy goat as teacher.

Besides the shows in New York, London and Los Angeles the musical in Stuttgart is controlled via grandMA consoles too. One grandMA full-size and one grandMA light are used. They control the show in connection with three MA NSPs, one dimMA rack and 13 MA DMX booster/splitter. During the pre-programming overall three grandMA full-size, two grandMA light as well as one grandMA replay-unit, all in a multi-user session, were used. The installed cables altogether have a length of nearly seven kilometres and spread from the drawing floor down to the stage, from the gallery to the stage direction.

110 x Rainbow PRO 6 scroller, 15 x Rainbow PRO 8 scroller, 4 x Rainbow PRO 12 scroller and 2 x Rainbow PRO 15 scroller dye the stage in the typical Wicked-Green and other colours. 12 x Rainbow Maxi 4 PSU provide the necessary current for them. Amongst other 34 x Vari*Lite VL3000 Q spot, 34 x Vari*Lite VL2500 spot, 30 x Vari*Lite VL2500 wash, 3 x Robert Juliat Cyrano, 329 ETC Source Four, 2 x De Sisti Piccolo 10kW and 28 x Major PAR Birdie light the show.

To solve the problem that some of the parts of the stage design have to be moveable and illuminated two Wireless Solution BlackBox S1 transmitter and seven Wireless solution BlackBox R-512 receiver with batteries are installed. 46 x Major power distributions deliver the current for the whole lighting.

Each new show of Wicked is based on the original lighting design by Kenneth Posner. As associate lighting designer for Stuttgart worked Michael Odam and Karen Spahn. Andy Peistrup is head of lighting, Philipp Herbst programmer.

Photo: Copyright Stage Entertainment