For the five performances of the rock musical HERILO: Das Rad dreht sich weiter, staged at the Energie Schwaben Arena in Kaufbeuren from 28 June to 5 July 2026, lighting designer Leo Herrmann of Lumenlabor created a stage space 32 metres wide.
Using a symmetrical lighting architecture built from 128 GLP WildBar 16 and 64 GLP impression X5 Compact fixtures, he concentrated the light on an exceptionally broad playing area.
“I didn’t want simply to light the arena. I wanted to redefine the stage space”, says Leo Herrmann, lighting designer at Lumenlabor.
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HERILO is a musical developed for Kaufbeuren that connects the town’s past, present and future. At the centre of the story is the legendary figure of Herilo, linked by local tradition to Kaufbeuren and to the district now known as Hirschzell. Medieval scenes meet contemporary settings, accompanied by a score composed especially for the production.
The project was initiated and developed by Katharina and Wolfgang Wiedemann and subsequently brought to the stage by a professional creative team alongside around 100 people working both on stage and behind the scenes. For the performances, the Energie Schwaben Arena was transformed into a temporary musical theatre with a live band, orchestra, large-format LED video and a 32-metre stage. Lighting and rigging equipment for the production was supplied by Kaiser Showtechnik of Augsburg.
Leo Herrmann took on the lighting design for the first time this year. Having not worked on the production previously, he was able to approach the project without being constrained by the existing concept. His starting point was not the selection of individual fixtures, but the venue itself.
For me, good lighting design always begins with the room, not with the fixtures. I didn’t want to inherit an existing concept. I wanted to start by analysing what the arena actually makes possible, explains Herrmann.
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During his first site visit, he observed that the previous stage layout did not make full use of the arena’s spatial potential, so he opted for a fundamental change. The entire production was rotated 90 degrees and reoriented along the long side of the arena.
The new orientation created a 32-metre-wide stage space. This arrangement improved sightlines and audience capacity. It also gave Herrmann the opportunity to work with the full width and depth of the playing area.
His lighting design deliberately focused on the stage and its new geometry, from which he developed a fully symmetrical lighting architecture across four identically built trusses. Rather than programming the individual positions as separate units, he treated the entire structure as a single coherent instrument.
This allowed the light to be precisely directed across the full width of the stage while retaining its spatial concept. Performers, stage architecture, music and video were all treated as components of one shared overall picture. “The rotation was ultimately the foundation for the entire lighting concept”, says Herrmann. “It created new perspectives, improved the sightlines and gave us considerably more creative freedom”.
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For this symmetrical lighting architecture, Herrmann deployed 128 GLP WildBar 16 and 64 impression X5 Compact fixtures. Both models were used for scenic lighting and dynamic effects, allowing him to shape both the theatrical passages of the musical and the more intense musical moments, many of them driven by guitars.
Herrmann used the linear form of the WildBar 16 to emphasise the width of the stage, create clear graphic structures and make the spatial depth of each scene visible.
WildBar 16 was the perfect tool for me to render architecture and depth on the stage. Its clean lines guide the audience’s eye and reinforce the impact of a playing area some 32 metres across, explains Herrmann.
The impression X5 Compact fixtures extended this graphic structure with flexibly shapeable light for different scenes and moods. Herrmann had originally selected the larger impression X5 fixtures, but their weight ruled them out within the planned structure. X5 Compact offered a more compact alternative without requiring him to compromise on colour matching within the GLP portfolio.
“It was important to me that the fixtures came from the same manufacturer, above all because of the colours”, says Herrmann. “It meant the WildBar 16 and X5 Compact combined very well with one another. We had musical scenes with beautiful theatrical lighting, over which I ran rock’n’roll cues. For that, I could use both the X5 Compact and WildBar 16 equally, for illumination and as effect lighting”.
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The relationship between lighting and video was shaped by a decision Herrmann made during the early stages of the project. The previous year’s staging had placed a large-format LED wall behind the orchestra, an approach he chose not to repeat. “I deliberately decided against that solution for this year’s production”, explains Herrmann. “It was important to me not to create silhouettes of instruments, backline or the musicians themselves in front of the video surface. Instead, the visual attention should be concentrated on the central playing area”.
The lighting was not intended to dominate the content of the LED surface either. Instead, it carried the colours, forms and moods of the digital image onwards into the stage space so that video content and lighting design flowed visually into one another.
For me, light and video belong inseparably together. The light should extend the content of the LED wall into the stage space. If the audience takes in the overall picture and doesn’t stop to think about where light ends and video begins, then I've achieved my aim, says Herrmann.
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