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Anders Matthesen on tour with Robe moving lights

For his 25th anniversary tour, Danish comedian Anders ‘Anden’ (the Duck) Matthesen used eleven trucks of production equipment. Seven shows were played in Denmark’s two largest arenas - five  the Royal Arena in Copenhagen and two in the Jyske Bank Boxen Arena in Herning.

Peter Fisker, Matthesen’s lighting designer since 2006, chose Robe moving lights, specifying 26 x MegaPointes, 33 x BMFL Spots and another three BMFL Spots utilized as a RoboSpot follow spotting system complete with one MotionCamera and one BaseStation. These were delivered, together with rest of the lighting equipment, by Copenhagen based rental specialist Comtech.

Set designer Palle Christensen produced a design based on a clean modern look, with two large IMAG screens left and right, a series of multi-level risers, a semi-transparent cloth backdrop which included a massive scenic duck set flat outlined in LED to reinforce the nick-name. There was a long winding runway out into the audience which enabled him to get in amongst a vast amount of the audience.

Before the start of the tour, there was a month-long rehearsal period, and this is where most of the lighting cues evolved, just as the show, the material, the sketches and several songs developed. It included one side-splitting skit where Matthesen is ‘controlling’ the lighting rig from his cell phone.

Peter Fisker needed a load of LED wash light for the base colours, and BMFL Spots were selected as the show’s profile fixture. While there was haze and smoke at strategic moments, for most of the show he needed the beams to be potent enough without any atmospheric enhancement.

Having already seen the RoboSpot in action on some touring productions, Fisker decided to use it on this tour, adding three more BMFL Spots as his back-follow spots, which were operated via one RoboSpot BaseStation positioned backstage.

This gave him the option of picking any of the three BMFL RoboSpots best positioned to highlight Matthesen according to where he was on the stage or runway. They worked in conjunction with two manually operated Robert Juliat Lancelot 4Ks in the FOH positions.

Five of the MegaPointes were rigged on vertical trusses just behind each of the screens, so they appeared from behind, blasting across the stage creating structural patterns. At times they moved out and skimmed across the audience. Another four were under each screen, creating ACL style looks with six on the floor upstage and two at the centre entranceway mid-way along the onstage staircase.

Also on the rig were 48 x 2-lite blinders dotted around and on top of the drapes. Three Swobodas were used for the opening sequence. The Duck’s LED outline added another 487 x 4-channel RGBW LED fixtures and 1948 DMX channels to the MQ500 lighting desk. Fisker operated the show from his ChamSys lighting control console while the RoboSpot operator took care of the pan/tilt, zoom and focus.

(Photos: Louise Stickland)

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