“We put day and night on stage”

Bregenz, 12.7.2024. Florian Schmitt is back for a second time after Rigoletto, working on a production on the festival’s lake stage. Joining the director and stage designer Philipp Stölzl, he’s in charge of the lighting design for Der Freischütz. Around 200 lighting moods have been created to conjure up the right atmosphere on the stage. In this interview, the 39 year old from Oberhausen in western Germany talks about the day-to-day teamwork and the technical challenges on the world’s largest lake stage.

You worked at the Bregenz Festival for the first time in 2019. What were your first impressions?

Till then I only knew the stage sets and the James Bond film. Coming here for the first time made a great impression on me – the natural backdrop alone, with the lake. At that time the Rigoletto clown was under construction. I realised that it’s really sophisticated here and on a very high level technologically. An open air stage with these dimensions was new territory for me. But I got used to the situation quickly, because I was made to feel at home right away.

Rigoletto was your first collaboration with Philipp Stölzl. How did that work?
When you work with someone for the first time, you have to find out: what does that person want? Philipp has very precise ideas. He speaks a lot in moods and feelings, which then require technical realisation. We were on the same wavelength quickly. Within the whole team the communication was very pleasant from the outset because they’re all very professional and there are no hierarchies. The same goes for this production. As people we got on well immediately. Philipp, just like me, isn’t a classical theatre person.

What does the lighting design achieve in Der Freischütz?
Our job is to portray daytime and night-time situations. During the day we are in a kind of ice world, by night it’s dark and gloomy, and then there’s also the Wolf’s Ravine. It’s about using light to differentiate the various performing spaces and to divide the scenes. In a theatre, switching from one world to another is much easier. On an outdoor stage, lighting is mainly responsible for that. It helps the audience understand where the action is taking place.

What are the biggest challenges for you? 
Above all, it’s the situation that we’re performing in a basin of water. And also that the stage set reaches right up to the front row – we’ve never had that before. The audience shouldn’t be constantly dazzled by reflections from the water. That’s why we light a great deal from the side rather than from behind. In addition to that and in contrast to Rigoletto, for example, the entire stage set is a performing space, from the top of the hill to the steeple of the church tower. For us, that means reaching everywhere with relatively few lamps. There are sometimes up to 100 people on the stage at one time, and of course it should be possible to see all of them clearly. The art lies in erecting as few lighting towers as possible, because they interfere with the stage picture.

As the lighting designer for the lake stage, you finish work at an unusual time, particularly now during the final phase ...
With an open air event, we can only work once it’s dark. The evening stage rehearsal begins at the original time, that is 9.15 pm. I film it with a small camera so that we can check what isn’t working yet by looking at the video material. We get down to these corrections immediately afterwards in the lighting rehearsal, which goes on till 2.30 or 3 in the morning. We carry on like this until tomorrow, Saturday. The premiere’s on Wednesday. When all three casts have stood on the stage once, then my job is over.

(tb)