Robe Taps into Lady Gaga Mayhem at Coachella Lady Gaga's two-hour performance at Coachella came complete with elaborate costumes, video, and diligently crafted lighting. Lighting designer Jeremy Lechterman of FragmentNine (F9) was part of a talented creative team -- which included production designers Es Devlin and Jason Ardizzone-West, choreographer Parris Goebel, video designer Jackson Gallagher and the artist herself, who devised this stadium show, inspired by a dynamic mix of pop, opera, rock, gothic and several other genres. The show has also been staged in Mexico, Rio de Janeiro -- in front of over two million fans -- and Singapore. Prominent on Lechterman's lighting design for Coachella 2025's Main Stage were some key Robe moving light elements: 82 iFORTE LTXs, 17 iFORTE LTX Follow Spots, and 22 ESPRITES. Before Coachella, Lechterman and F9 had just recently started work with Lady Gaga and her team, led by Parris Goebel, who is also the creative director, brought onboard to deliver the combined lighting and video content package. With a wide stage and upstage LED surface, a moving video disc roof piece in the center, and a video floor making up a B-stage out in the arena, bright lights were essential, and Lechterman says he knew he could count on Robe's iFORTE. He notes that specifically for the two Coachella shows, a full 360-degree cinema spec multi-camera system was involved in recording the performance, adding a new layer of production that needed dealing with. Especially given the tight time window, he knew FORTE luminaires would produce the desired quality and texture of light needed to work for this shoot, directed by Micah Bickham. In addition to Lady Gaga herself, multiple dancers and the band were onstage also. At Coachella, five of the FORTE FSs were part of the Lady Gaga touring rig supplied by Solotech, together with one BaseStation, with the rest supplied by 4Wall, the festival's lighting vendor. The five touring FORTE FSs were rigged on a snake-shaped over-stage truss, which was contoured to follow the scenic set and screen lines, and was also upstage of a moving circular LED "disk" forming part of the stage architecture. The other 12 FORTE FSs (from the event) were positioned on four front-of-house towers to get the best stage coverage. The standard FORTES were deployed all over the stage rig, along the snake truss, in the overhead and side positions. On the four 40' high delay towers located approximately 250' out in the audience, more FORTES were deployed in clusters of three or four fixtures. These positions were well-suited for working the stage. As well as choosing FORTE for all its characteristics, Lechterman notes that both FORTES and ESPRITES can be sourced from most places around the world, which is always a consideration when designing touring shows. The 22 ESPRITES were positioned in a row around the back of the deck and in the left and right wing positions, picked for their low profile as the stage needed to be kept as clean as possible from any protruding technical hardware. Making the show spectacular yet simultaneously intimate and adaptable to follow the artist's narrative was the greatest challenge and also the most enjoyable part of the imaginative journey for Lechterman. "From the first conversations, we all knew that the goal would be amalgamating the diversity of lighting and visual treatments needed to present and support a show of this scale, depth and detail, and assisting in making connections and getting the energy out to all in the audience across a vast area," he explains. Lechterman worked on the show alongside two lighting programmers -- Sam Payne and Dane Kick -- with the latter also running the show and lighting directing in Mexico, Brazil, and Singapore. The designer was supported by associate lighting designer Alex Talbot. 
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