Oliver Twist in a new light

Juanjo Llorens stages the musical at Teatro La Latina with the help of Cameo

With “Oliver Twist - El Musical”, one of the major family productions of the season is currently celebrating its premiere at Madrid’s historic Teatro La Latina. The production has been brought into being by AMR Produce, the creative team that has already enjoyed great success with the multi-award-winning musical “Los Chicos del Coro”. For Oliver Twist, the team again looked to create a close relationship between the music, set and lighting design. Renowned Spanish lighting designer Juanjo Llorens returns to implement the visual realisation of the project and has once again turned to lighting solutions from Cameo for his new project.

Light as an emotional narrator

For Juanjo Llorens, the lighting design for Oliver Twist is much more than simply illuminating the stage action. Instead, he sees light as a narrative device that visualises the inner turmoil and vulnerability of the characters. “The vision for the lighting design was to use colours, unusual angles and strong shadows to create an unsettling atmosphere that reflects the abandonment and sadness of the street children,” explains Juanjo Llorens. At the same time, the light had to give the young protagonists space to reveal their innocence and hope – a deliberate tension between darkness and humanity.

David Pizarro’s stage design with stairs, arches and passageways provides the ideal basis for this. Light is deliberately developed out of the space, emerging from niches or cutting geometric shapes into the scenery – and always in service of the story.

“Thanks to their compact size, controllable light emission and zoom, the OTOS W3s give me security in confined spaces where heat development and light angles would otherwise quickly become a problem."
Juanjo Llorens, Lighting Designer

Versatile lighting setup

For the visual realisation, Juanjo Llorens relies on a carefully selected light setup using the Cameo OPUS and OTOS series. Juanjo Llorens positions the OTOS W3 IP65 wash moving head directly in the stage set – under stairs, in arcades or narrow passageways. “Thanks to their compact size, controllable light emission and zoom, the OTOS W3s give me security in confined spaces where heat development and light angles would otherwise quickly become a problem.” With just a few parameters, both warm, inviting backlighting and aggressive, harsh accents can be realised – a central stylistic device for staging.

The OPUS SP5 profile spot moving heads are primarily used as atmospheric ambient lighting and for structuring effects. “They are reliable and give me the confidence to realise certain looks quickly and safely,” confirms Juanjo Llorens. Again and again, the OPUS SP5 with permanently applied, soft-focus gobo is used to create deliberately “dirty” and refracted light images that match the dark world of Oliver Twist.

With the even more powerful OPUS SP5+ profile spot moving heads, Juanjo Llorens has added extra lumen power and precision to the setup. In the hands of the lighting designer, they create geometric patterns such as windows or grids and lend scenes symbolic depth. At the same time, they enable seamless transitions between individual lighting scenes without creating visual clutter.

Proven cooperation

Juanjo Llorens already worked successfully with Cameo on Los Chicos del Coro, also at the Teatro La Latina, back then in the form of OPUS SP5 and EVOS W3 – a production that won several MET Musical Awards for its lighting design, among other things. For the experienced designer, the renewed decision in favour of Cameo for Oliver Twist is therefore only logical: “I know the brand and I know how reliable the lights are. In terms of production costs, Cameo allows me to realise my entire visual world without having to compromise.”