Archive for June, 2009

An Analysis of Lighting Angles – Frontlight

Monday, June 29th, 2009

Continuing my basic primer on elementary lighting ideas we move on from Backlight and Sidelight to Frontlight. Traditionally, frontlight has been considered the primary angle for lighting a play and while certainly very useful, we will explore how this seemingly simple idea can actually create many and varied lighting effects, looks and moods.

When I discussed the various lighitng angles in my introductory essay I said that Frontlight “defines the features. It allows us to experience the “[b]ody as [an] emotional subject.” Backlight might distinguish our performer from the background, and sidelight might reveal the human body as a sculptural object, but frontlight allows us to connect with the performer as an emotional being. It gives presence to the minute facial features and gestures that might otherwise be obscured in shadow by more severe lighting angles.

Frontlight is very soft relative to other angles of light. As such, if it is used exclusively it quickly runs the risk of looking boring or dull. It can too easily wash out features as much as reveal them and make rather dynamic objects, particularly clothing and faces, appear flat and two dimensional. Like any other angle, frontlight is a tool to be used in conjunction with other lighting angles to provide a full visual experience for the audience.

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Frontlight can manifest in a variety of ways. Straight frontlight is lighting that comes in from front of house positions at a roughly 45 degree angle to the performers face. This is a standard theatrical and musical position that gives basic facial visibility to the actor. A variation on this is diagonal frontlight which keeps the same 45 degree angle, but uses two lights for each acting area coming in at 90 degrees from each other. This puts one light at a 45 degree angle from either side of the performer’s face. Stanley McCandless famously used this as the primary means of lighitng a stage play in his seminal work A Method for Lighting the Stage.

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While many to most designers have moved far afield from the theories of McCandless, his ideas still have a great deal of historical significance and deserve mention. The great thing about his “method” is that is allows a designer to create a fairly complex visual image through a minimum of instrumentation. Diagonal frontlight not only illuminates the entirety of the performers face, it does so with a minimum of sculpting as well. This way it is possible to create looks with a fair amount of depth and sculpture with very few lights. However, in most practical situations today, your lighting system is going to be sophisticated enough that such a rudimentary approach is not needed.

Beyond these two options there are low angled frontlight from the balcony rail and footlights. The balcony rail is an interesting position as it gives the designer the flattest possible angle to work from. This is superb when lighting in-one drops or show curtains. It can also be very effective when projecting clouds or other patterns from the front as the light can get underneath the borders and light upstage drops without interfering with performers. Further, there are occasional times where the extreme flatness is desired. Perhaps a sunset effect where the setting sun comes from the house and the performers are all pushed into the scenery by way of the lighting. The balcony rail can be a great location for deeply saturated colors used to fill in shadows in a musical comedy or comedic dance.

The last frontlight position to consider is footlights. Long considered an old-fashioned relic of 19th century lighting, in the last decade or so the strategic use of footlights have made a comeback. While the very generalized footlight strips go in and out of fashion, so too have footlight spots. While on their own they provide a rather severe look best suited to a diabolical soliloquy or fantasy melodrama, when used in conjunction with other lighting ideas they can work to soften the shadows underneath a performers chin or eyebrow or hat.

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Far from a single “boring” thing, frontlight has many permutations and possibilities inherent in it. While its overuse can easily take an interesting scene and make it look dull and boring, so too can any other lighting angle. Through the strategic use of frontlight, in conjunction with the three other angles of light, the designer can create an infinite array of lighting looks and possibilities.

Teaching, Influence and Critique

Saturday, June 27th, 2009

Yesterday, I ran into a former student of mine from when I coached debate back in College. There were several of us who taught at El Cerrito High each with our own specialty. My particular thing was philosophical critique, specifically the Heideggarian critique of technology. To anyone who has been reading this blog for any length of time I know it will come as no surprise that I was teaching advanced philosophy to highschool students at the age of 19.

What amazed me about this meeting was the discovery I had during our brief reunion of the impact of my teaching on this man’s life and the lives of several other students of mine. One, it seems, took the critique as far as it could go and made it to the college national debate finals.

I have loved teaching ever since this first experience but, until now, had never had any direct experience of the effect it could have. Certainly I know the influence of my own teachers, but the thought never crossed my mind that I could be that to someone else. Then suddenly over a decade later a random guy turns to you in a restaurant while eating a burrito and tells you that you contributed, in a not insignificant way, to something that was a major part of his life.

Truly, an amazing experience.

This got me thinking about influence and what that means. While the substantial reason for my writing this blog for the last three and a half years has been to provide me with a means of working through my own inner thinking, I have held a small hope that my words might in some way impact someone’s life for the better.

Whenever we engage in any pursuit we have an impact on others. No matter if you are cleaning floors or leading the free world, your actions have an impact. In the end, we are all part of a network and the strength of that network is directly related to the value we, as actors within it, give out. Value is a difficult thing to measure and in the end highly subjective. That said, we all have our own inner barometer of what is valuable. While we may spend endless hours disagreeing over what is of value in the abstract, we can all, in every moment, work to create value according to our own inner drive.

For the last few weeks I have been writing a lot about the basics of lighting. In my own blog I am midway through a series on basic lighting angles that is written to be a very elementary introduction for young lighting designers just stepping into this world, or for other people who would like a better idea of what it is that we do. In addition I have been writing a basic intro to the lighting designer’s process over at Isaac Butler’s blog. And recently I put together an article on the basic’s of dance lighting for Rob Sayer’s blog.

My true love and first interest in design is the intersection of visual design and advanced critical theory. This is one of the things that I loved about studying with John Conklin at NYU. He can design the hell out of a play for performance, but at the same time delves deeper into a text to bring about a visual reading than anyone else I have ever encountered.

All this is to say two things. The first is that we simultaneously influence and are influenced by the people around us. Depending upon our relative capacities it may be more or less, but that give and take is always there in all relationships wether formally academic or not. The second thing, and of direct import to this space here is that I will very likely be returning to my original motivation with regards to writing about the theatre. That is, taking on a deeply probing critique of the text and applying that to the visual world.

More than anything else that we do as designers, we are providing a visual reading of a text. That idea has been, and will continue to be a guiding principal of my design work and by extension, my writing.

Not all design can be talked about. Not all plays can be talked about. In the same way, there were ideas held in that Heidegger critique that could not merely be read or spoken. They had to be experienced. In the theatre, we are engaging in a deep reading of a text. Unlike philosophers and critical theorists whose work in this regard manifests only as words, our work translates words to the visual realm. It at once dives into and rises beyond the capacity for language.

Critique, and in that word I mean to include the theatre, lives only in the realm of debate. It exists in the reading by the performers and the designers and the directors. That reading lives on through the reading of the audience. When Hegel talked about the dialectic nature of thought, it was not merely philosophy that those ideas encompassed. All of human effort, all of society and culture, exist by those same rules.

No thesis may be presented that does not contain within it the seed of its anti-thesis and by that a future synthesis. This is biological life. This is the history of ideas. This is the world of theater. From word to image and back to word. Perhaps a few still images or video remains but in the end all we have are the thesis, the text and its resultant synthesis, the review, that came about through union with the text’s anti-thesis the performance.

I have traveled far afield from a post that was intended to be about our responsibility as teachers and creators. But then, perhaps this is all immediately germane to that topic. Perhaps the mundanities of responsibility are intimately wedded to the most abstract thought. Heidegger himself after all was concerned with the most basic of things. He took the most sophisticated and sublime of continental theory and used it to talk about hammers and shoes.

While we may remember the extreme highs and lows of our lives the best, it is so often the simple living and doing of our works as humans that we are remembered by others.

Gadget – A Review

Friday, June 26th, 2009

Note: I have not, to date done reviews on this site for a variety of reasons. That said, I have so generally been frustrated with what I have seen in the Bay Area performance world that I would like to make special mention of shows that particularly stand out. There have been a few since I have been here and rather than going backwards, I will simply look forwards. This is the first.

It begins no different than a gallery piece. A few objects hang in space. We, the audience, mill about looking and interacting. Sound and video play out of phase. Found sound and found footage connect in this room for the first time, or reconnect after a long separation. Sometimes harmonious, sometimes dissonant, it soon becomes clear these are intentional accidents.

Not accidents at all in fact, the objects move and interact with the audience. Small clear plastic domes, three of them, with speakers mounted inside. Just big enough of two or three heads to fit inside and listen. These speakers tell a different story than the words coming from the video. Sometimes profound, sometimes mundane monologues against a background of war.

She emerges from the darkness of the crowd. A face a little too intense to be a spectator.

Somewhere the focus shifts. No longer mere installation we are watching a dance. This is a dance between video, music and human form. She starts simply. From a stare building to crescendo in writhing explosions, a body at war with itself. A self trying to contain the destructive power of the atomic bomb exploding around it.

This is Gadget

A performative installation conceived and designed by David Szlaza. Gadget explores the emotional center of the creation of the atomic bomb and its aftermath.

Gadget is being produced as part of FoolsFury’s three week ensemble festival. Music is by Matt:Matt with movement by Kira Kirsch. Gadget runs approximately 1 hour. Performs through this Saturday June 27th.

The company’s description:

“GADGET” is an interactive media installation that is intended to simultaneously bring humanity and humanness to the collaborators of the Manhattan Project through original and archival interviews while provoking the audience to question their own understanding and opinions of the creation of the atomic bomb and its effect on society. Through a combination of media and live performance, the installation aims to create an environment of learning and experience for the audience that is unique and individualized. By allowing manipulation of the material and the ability to choose what they are looking at and listening to, an audience member can begin to exercise his or her autonomous democratic rights and develop their own sense of consciousness around the making of the atomic bomb.

A Designer Prepares – Part 2

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

The second part in my three part series A Designer Prepares is up at Isaac Butler’s blog. You can check it out here.

If you have not done so, you can read Part 1 here.

Of Mice and Men – Pictures

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Directed by Katy Brown
Scenery by Cheri DeVol
Costumes by Amanda Aldridge

This production will be touring the US throughout the fall of 2009.

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Photography courtesy Cheri DeVol

Dance Lighting – Introduction

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

I wrote an article for the British design blog On Stage Lighting about dance lighting. Check out the article here.

An Analysis of Lighting Angles – Sidelight

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

Last week I talked about Backlight and its many uses. Continuing my primer on basic lighting ideas I will now discuss the use of sidelighting.

For a long time sidelight was considered a specialty item or something only really used in the realm of dance. Even today I have seen numerous lighting designers who shy away from the use of sidelight in a play. This is unfortunate since sidelighting lends a wonderful depth and fullness to a design and is an invaluable tool at the lighting designer’s disposal.

When I discussed the various angles of light available to a designer I described sidelighting as something that “defines the physical form itself.” The use of sidelight allows us to see the “[b]ody as [a] sculptural object.” If backlight helps us to separate foreground from background, subject from object, then sidelighting allows us to see the thing itself, as itself.

Once defined independent of its context, the human form must now be revealed for what it is, a body in space. This is a body that moves from point A to point B. It is a body that wears clothes and those clothes move. Not only does sidelighting give us a clear idea of the human body, it also allows us to appreciate the clothing on that body as a formal object.

Dance is perhaps the medium to make the greatest use of sidelighting. Since the body of the dancer is the primary focus in dance, lighting is often positioned to show off that body to great effect. Not only is the body revealed in a pleasing manner, but it is done so in such a way that only the body is lit, or at least that the body has a strong highlight relative to everything else on stage.

To achieve this effect, lights are used that sit low to the stage floor between the head height of the dancer and their shin. These lights are typically focused to illuminate the body of the dancer while everything else remains dark. When used on their own, this can have the effect of making the dancer appear to float, as if by magic, upon the void of the stage.

A wonderful benefit of this kind of lighting comes from the fact that the performer is lit but the stage floor is not. As such, the floor may then be treated in any manner desirable by the lighting designer, through the use of color, texture or intensity. In a careful design of light on the floor a designer may create an infinite array of emotional landscapes upon which the brilliantly lit performer moves.

lowside

One trouble with this kind of lighting for many stage plays is that the look can be quite severe. While showing the body off nicely, it also gives a very high contrast look that includes many shadows. Typically a dark line appears down the front center of the body where the light is obscured by various body parts, such as the nose.

sidelight

In order to avoid this effect, many plays that employ sidelighting will use lights from overhead. This has the benefit of maintaining the sculptural quality of sidelighting while at the same time allowing the light itself to illuminate the whole human form. Using just high angle sidelighting will still give a sharp look, but not at the expense of basic visibility of the human face.

Crosslight

As the angle of the light increases it hits the stage floor harder and the sidelight begins to wash out the effect of any backlight and top light design on the floor itself. The designer must take this into account and determine ahead of time how the sidelighting will mix with the backlighting ideas. This can be used with wonderful results when designing a low light through trees. The dappled light on the floor and the performer can reinforce the feel of an afternoon sun more so than if the two were independent.

Because the same basic function can be achieved, revealing the sculptural qualities of the human form, through any combination of sidelight angles, the designer has the flexibility to decide if they want that light to impact the design of the floor and if so, to what extent. In many ways, then, sidelighting has more variations and possibilities than any other lighting angle.

Why I may have to quit lighting design

Friday, June 19th, 2009

It started about a year and a half ago. With hindsight we see this as the beginning of the recession, but all I knew was that more and more shows and companies were going under for financial reasons. I didn’t see it as a pattern until well into this phenomenon. During that year, 2008, my income dropped over 20% from where it had been in years previous. Having dutifully kept emergency fund savings as a buffer for just such an occasion, I was able to rely on that net to tide me over into 2009. But now that too is gone.

In November of 2008 I moved from New York City to Oakland, California. While I had a few commitments across the country to keep up, I have only lit three shows here to date. An average of one show every three months does not a sustainable career make. For reference, in 2007 and earlier I was averaging 2.5 shows a month. Things might be better next season, but very little is forthcoming as of now.

On top of this, there is a recession on, so when I send out applications for non-lighting work I am up against people with far better qualifications than I for the position. In short, I can’t get a job.

In May I applied for a grant to supplement my rapidly decreasing income. Yesterday I got news that I was not among the chosen. The moneys would go to other “emerging” artists whose applications better fit the criteria of the grant. Sometime in July or August I will run out of money.

For the last five years I have shied away from full time employment because who is going to give someone a week and a half off to go work somewhere else. It was hard enough to take part-time work to supplement my income during slumps. Well, at this point it seems that, unless there is a radical change somewhere, I will need to find that full time job, any job, to keep food on my plate, shoes on my feet and a roof over my head. Doing that will, by necessity, radically reduce if not eliminate my ability to do the design work I love.

It’s too bad because I am good. The people who keep hiring me again and again seem to think so. But talent alone does not pay the bills and with more companies going under, I need more different people hiring me rather than a decreasing pool of the same.

Oh, and unless I misread something on the web form, I am ineligible for unemployment since I have not technically been “employed.” More fun and games.

For your reading pleasure, I have included the essay I wrote for the grant below.

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Dance lighting has always been my first love with regards to lighting design. The poetry and precision required by the medium speaks directly to my heart and soul. It is difficult to put into words what exactly happens to me when that moment is achieved where the synthesis of light and movement suddenly creates a moment so profound the body appears to give way wholly to the soul since the experience can not be taken in by bodily senses alone. That moment of perfection is what my work continually strives for. That moment of perfection that keeps the breath at bay.

My design work has spanned traditional theaters, site-specific performance and installations and all of these modes of performance feed and fuel one another creating a dialogue within my own work between various performative disciplines. In particular the site-specific work I have have done has greatly informed the manner in which I approach a new space even if it is a traditional proscenium theatre. Every space is unique and each one requires a distinct way of approaching light to find the best way that light moves in that space. From an 11th Century chapel in Rumania to a climbable sculpture in the Nevada desert I have explored light and space in myriad ways outside the typical challenges of what most lighting designers must face.

Over the last several years I have been working towards an aesthetic rooted in minimalism that engages the mind and the heart and the soul. My design work tends to the extreme in terms of emotional honesty and rigorous intellectual support. Having explored these themes extensively in theatre, with both traditional and site specific work, I am looking to collaborate on a deep exploration of these modes of being in the dance world.

For the last five years my dance work has primarily been in the realm of Ballet. Having spent several years in New York working with the New York Theatre Ballet I gained an extensive knowledge of early 20th Century modern masterpieces. My work with the dances of De Mille, Anthony Tudor and other classic modern choreographers allowed me to fully explore the world of narrative dance. This work has been an invaluable contribution to my more abstract designs as it gives a strong narrative foundation to my lighting.

This upcoming project with LEVYDance provides me with the opportunity to bring together these many different aesthetic paths I have been exploring over the last few years. The quality of their movement rooted in the idioms of modern and post-modern dance brings forth my interest in minimalism, while at the same time they maintain an engaging pop sensibility that allows them to directly engage with audiences otherwise wary of dance. Further, the site-specific nature of the piece calls on my extensive work on projects of that type.

Since moving back to the Bay Area in 2008 my dance lighting has been mixed. Both strict narrative pop-culture works like Dracul: Prince of Fire and more abstract works with LEVYDance. Working with LEVYDance has been a wonderful opportunity as the choreography spans the worlds of abstract movement and narrative storytelling. The work with them has been, and will continue to be a wonderful synthesis of these two modes of seeing that my lighting design spans.

My lighting has been seen across the United States and has received positive international notice. I have long desired to do work both firmly rooted in the American experience while fostering artistic dialog with the larger global community. I intend to base myself in the Bay Area and work throughout the local performing arts scene while also contributing my design work to projects across the US and internationally. Moving from Berkeley to New York was a part of this plan, to gain the knowledge and expertise that is unique to that theatre world and then bring it home to give back to the place that I first found my artistic voice.

Having moved back to my native Bay Area filled with enthusiasm to take what I have learned in New York and apply it here I have found myself more and more despondent as the economic realities have forced much of my attention to go towards paying the bills thus leaving me with less and less energy and emotional resources to truly dive into the work in front of me and give it the 110% that I typically bring to my designs.

I have been working diligently since my return to get my name and my work out to Bay Area directors, choreographers and producers. Unfortunately, the long hours of scraping together enough work to pay the bills often leaves me with little time and less money to actually see the work being done by other artists. In 2008 my design related income dropped by over 20% of what it had been previously with fees and seasons being cut and companies going under due to economic strain. This year is on track to be even worse.

Given the current economic climate, I am concerned that my creativity will be sacrificed like Rodolfo’s manuscript, burned to keep the artist from freezing. So in plain terms the money would help me in paying rent and bills first. The remainder will be used to immerse myself in the world of Bay Area theatre. To give me the opportunity to meet and see the work of local artists without worrying over whether the money for that $30 ticket could better be spent on rice and cheese. As such, I would ask for the full amount of $XXXXX. This would greatly ease the economic strains I am finding myself under, and while it would not fully return me to my pre-2008 income, it
would substantially and significantly improve my ability to contribute to the Bay Area theatre and dance worlds.

Having this grant will give my creativity the space it needs to truly flourish, away from the stresses of money. Further, it will feed my creativity by giving me access to the work that I have largely had to deny myself due to my economic situation. I find that my design work is at its best when I have a constant stream of new artistic input, be it theatre, dance, opera or museums. I will avail myself of the many resources the Bay Area has in these regards and emerge a stronger more well rounded theatre artist.

My work with LEVYDance, and other Bay Area companies, will be greatly improved. I will truly be able to take the many things I learned in New York, both professionally and artistically, and apply them to my work here in the Bay Area. Not only will my own life be improved, but the quality of the performing arts in the Bay Area will be improved, not just this year, but on-going as the artists whose work I come into contact with dialog with my own work and we continue the great conversation that is the performing arts.

Wizard of Oz – Pictures

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

Directed by Richard Rose
Conducted by Tim Robertson
Scenery and Projections by Richard Finkelstein
Costumes and Choreography by Amanda Aldridge

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All photography Copyright Richard Finkelstein

A Designer Prepares

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

I am writing a short three part series over at Isaac Butler’s blog titled A Designer Prepares. Part one is up here.


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