Crime thrillers can be seen on TV every evening. But this was the first time one of the most famous crime thrillers of world literature was performed outdoors and in front of the huge background of a cathedral. And with a top star like Mario Adorf and directed by Dieter Wedel to boot!.
The story about murder, revenge and betrayal is inspired by the myth of the Nibelungen. Moritz Rinke, one of the most important theatre writers of this age, has provided the actual text for the city of Worms.
Worms. Germany´s oldest city. It is here that Hagen kills Siegfried and Brünhild hangs her husband Gunther on the nail on their wedding night. At this point,, the Nibelungen tragedy takes its course and becomes a suspenseful thriller just like the preparation and auditions for the festival performances.
“The lighting was a great challenge for the whole production, as we had to span large spaces and floodlight
enormous areas”, says Harald Frings, leading director for the mounting of lighting equipment. “It was not easy to mount all the lights on such a large stage of 40 metres wide by 20 metres long. The beautiful cathedral of Worms was to remain visible as a background making it impossible to place any back lights there. The only place to hang moving lights were the backs of the stand. However, by doing so, the light from the front fell in a very small angle. Because of this, we tried to use the light from the side that reached the stage floor after filtering through the big trees on the stage. In addition, moving lights were placed in the position of floor aprons.”
The standard lighting circumstances (e.g. portal bridge) of a theatre were not provided in Worms. Therefore, we had the opportunity to show the possibilities of moving lights for classical use in theatres.
On this occasion, it became clear that it would be impossible to evoke these new moods with conventional tools. This event saw the extremely efficient support of Lightpower, which supplied the lighting and control equipment. The company based in P. is sole distributor of Clay Paky fixture for Germany, and for this event they made use of 37 Stage Color 1200, 26 Stage Zoom 1200 and 4 stage Profile Plus SV, the Clay Paky’s new and sophisticated moving body beam shapers. All the Clay Paky’s projectors adapt particularly well to theatrical presentations: this is largely due to their high quality optics and operating silence, taken a step further in the Silent Version series of moving body projectors crafted to perform on stages where silence is the word.
Everything went smoothly during the première on the August 17th, and the more than 2000 guests expressed
their enthusiasm with standing ovations. Altogether there were 12 performances with more than 26.000
visitors and even today, an encore performance is planned for the following years.
Behind the Scenes:
General Contractor: KulturTechnik GmbH
Director: Dieter Wedel
Supervisor: Klaus Naseband
Lighting Designer: Ulli Schneider
Set Up Lighting: Harald Frings
Operator: Sören Neumann Holbeck
Set Design: Gerd Friedrich