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Robe fixtures for ‘American Idiot’ in Buenos Aires

An Argentinian creative team including director, set and lighting designer Ariel del Mastro, lighting director Ariel ‘El Gato’ Ponce and video designer Maxi Vecco have created a production design for Green Day’s rock opera ‘American Idiot’, playing at the Broadway Theatre in Buenos Aires. Robe moving lights were central to the show, with Spiiders, Spikies and Squares prominent on the rig.

American Idiot is playing in rep at the Broadway Theatre with two other shows, the ‘Mahatma’ cirque-musical extravaganza and the adult orientated erotic show ‘Taboo’. While the three shows utilized the same rig, they all looked completely different. Some of the Robe fixtures were re-positioned and re-rigged in between, and ‘Mahatma’ also utilised some additional Robe Pointes.

Ariel del Mastro also designed sets for the productions mentioned above and came up with the idea of masking the extensive video elements installed for ‘Mahatma’ to produce the fragmented back wall look that defined the ‘American Idiot’ performance space. At the theatre, Ariel Ponce operated the show each night.

The 32 x Spiiders were all on overhead trusses installed in the theatre roof and were used for all the stage washes and colouring. The Spikies were dotted all around the video screens upstage. Twelve of the 16 Squares were used upstage of the back wall, blasting through the 6 mm video screens, with four on the floor - brought on and off and positioned manually for certain scenes - for more effects.

The programming was an intense process. The video content was finalised later on in the pre-production process, so they had to start programming - there are over 230 multi-part cues in the GrandMA2 - without having the material to refer to and then tweak once the video was all stored and programmed in the media server.

CDM Productions supplied all the lighting for ‘American Idiot’, ‘Mahatma’ and ‘Taboo’ having made a large Robe investment in 2017 which was delivered by Argentinean distributor, TSD Group.

(Photos: Louise Stickland)

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