The Miracle of Bern Picks its Winning Clay Paky Team

	Photo: Stage Entertainment/Brinkhoff-Moegenburg and Stage Entertainment/Morris Mac Matzen

In the film The Miracle of Bern, director Sönke Wortmann tells the story of the unexpected German victory in the 1954 World Cup in Bern and, at the same time, focuses on the difficulties of a prisoner of war who returns home and fails to re-adjust to his old life. However, in conjunction with the German team's success, the ex-POW draws closer again to his son and his family. Stage Entertainment took this story and made it into a musical, which was staged in Hamburg for the first time at the end of 2014 with the same title.

Among the equipment lighting designer Andreas Fuchs chose for the production were 53 Alpha Profile 1500 STs, 18 Alpha Profile 800 STs, and 30 A.leda B-EYE K20s, all made by Clay Paky, along with one MA Lighting grandMA2 light, one grandMA2 ultra-light, two MA 8Port Nodes, two MA Network Processing Units (NPUs), and 26 12 x 2.3 kVA MA digital dimmers.

Fuchs spoke very positively about the Clay Paky A.leda B-EYE K20s: "I chose the B-EYE K20s for a number of reasons. First for their low noise level, which was extremely useful in a theatre. These moving head lights also require very little space on the rig -- therefore they add very little weight -- and produce very little heat. As regards the lighting design, besides the wash light and beam light functions, they offer gobo effects. They are different from conventional gobos and open the way to new, never-seen-before structural elements, which match the show perfectly. I was also able to use the B-EYEs to create a break with plaintive images. We should not forget that they also work admirably as beam lights, thanks to their brightness and the possibility of reducing their beam angle to 4-degrees."

Fuchs also had words of praise for the Clay Paky Alpha Profile 1500 STs and Alpha Profile 800 STs. "The light intensity of both lights is excellent. They may be focused in quickly and efficiently even when zoomed in from afar with the blinders, without large distortions and keeping straight lines. I was able to use the moving heads flexibly, both as stage lights for the actors and as lights for the stage, and this versatility is a big plus when it comes to theatres and musicals."

On the subject of his lighting design, Fuchs had this to say: "The biggest challenge was to adapt to the very different situations found in a musical with a flexible lighting rig. With the Miracle of Bern, we needed to design lighting both for classic acting and singing scenes and show-like moments with a large choir and 54 different visual stage sets, some of which were totally changed during the rehearsals."

Chief lighting technicians: Mike Neumann and Dimitri Ambokadze. Andy Peistrup was responsible for lighting coordination.