Light Cue 23

NOTE: This series originally appeared about a year ago at the Parabasis blog. It outlines my process for lighting a play. What follows is part four of four. Enjoy!

Up to now I have been talking exclusively of the planning phases of the play making process. I began alone with the text learning the story. I then joined my collaborators to develop our collective reading of that text. Once the concept is complete I returned to my studio to translate the design ideas from words and images and emotions into a lighting system. After weeks and months of planning we discover the efficacy of all this when we hit the stage. We enter the theater, load-in the scenery, costumes and lighting, focus the lights and begin our technical rehearsals. Theory is now put to practice.

I mentioned in the last essay that I keep my lighting systems as flexible as possible. There are myriad reasons for this but it all comes down to a simple adage a mentor of mine once said, "The table will always move." In other words, the transition from the rehearsal hall to the stage necessitates changes in the staging, setting, etc. that the creative team can not discover until we are actually there. Even then, the potential for changes are not final. There are certain discoveries that we can only make in front of an audience. This is why we have previews, to trim the fat off a production and make the performance experience as lean and good as possible.

I have had some of my favorite cues deleted when a scene in a new play is cut because it just isn't working. Anyone working in the theatre has experienced this. During the preview process we must be brutally honest with regard to the show. If a particular moment is not working, or is not working as effectively as desired, we must reevaluate what we are doing. Sometimes the trouble has to do with a certain scene not being in line with the rest of the concept. Other times, the problem is the concept as a whole.

I once lit a musical where the brightly colored caribbean themed set, that worked so well in the model, utterly failed on stage and had to be painted black after the first preview. Needless to say, the lighting all had to be re-colored and the whole show re-cued. Instead of large full-stage color ideas we shifted to a more isolated spot-lit look for the piece. Those broad ideas I had based upon the original concept were tossed and I was fortunate to have had the foresight to break up my control of the lighting ideas for a wholly different way of visually approaching the play.

Our reading of the text and the performance becomes refined as we add more elements to it. From the first reading alone in my studio, to the addition of my collaborator's thinking, to responding to the other design elements and finally with the addition of the audience we learn as we go how a given text will express itself most effectively. Being receptive to the feed back given in each of these stages allow us to guide the show towards it full potential and success.

I love it when a concept works right out of the gate. That said, the real test of a director/designer collaboration occurs when nothing is working. You soon find out how adept you are at altering or wholly changing a concept with opening night ticking ever closer to now and joke after joke not landing with the audience. This is a situation where doing a deep reading of the text, both on my own and with my collaborators proves necessary. Having one's thinking firmly grounded in the text provides a guide as to what options will be most true to the needs of the story.

No matter whether the show is running smoothly or is falling apart at the seams, my discussions with the director remain focused on the emotional moment we are dealing with. Sometimes it is as simple as "brighter" or "darker," but more often the problem is rooted in the emotional and dramatic needs of the moment and we must go back to the conceptual language we have been developing throughout the design and development phases. We look first to our reading of the text, our concept. If we are following all the rules we created for that world, we must then take a step back and evaluate that reading as a whole. It is no fun to overhaul an entire design concept that has been weeks or months in the making, but that possibility must remain open or the final work may not arrive at its fullest possible expression.

Building lighting looks in the theatre is where the designer's ability to "get behind the eyes" of the director becomes invaluable. Even after many weeks or months of concept development there is always a shift that happens in the theatre. What "shadowy" means to one person is very different to someone else. The lighting designer must interpret and translate all those words and research images into a visual experience that resonates with the rest of the creative team in terms of the larger concept. Getting there is not always a straight line. A director may say they want such and such a scene brighter when in fact the problem is a color issue. Sometimes, instead of turning up the light they mention, the best solution is turning down or off a different and contrasting light to make a certain area appear "brighter." This is why I like to keep the discussion focused on the dramatic needs rather than the equipment used.

There are often several solutions to a given problem. Our job as designers is to look at the problem and determine the best action or combination of actions to solve it. We must not only remain true to the concept as we understand it, we must synthesize the sometimes competing needs of our collaborators, the director and fellow designers.

Being flexible with regards to the specific implementation of an idea while remaining true to the vision itself allows all the collaborators to best meet the needs of the story vis a vis the experience of the audience. This is how we make a play. Many different creative minds working in concert towards the achievement of a larger artistic vision.

NOTE: This series originally appeared about a year ago at the Parabasis blog. It outlines my process for lighting a play. What follows is part three of four. Enjoy!

Once all the concept meetings are over and done with and the scenic and costume designs complete, it is time for me to begin thinking about actual lighting instruments and gel colors. Until now all my thinking has been conceptual, but this is the point in the process where I take the concept and turn it into a reality. That harsh noon sun becomes a bank of PARCans, the moon a 2K Fresnel.

This is also the phase of the process where I begin to analyze the set (or location if a site-specific piece). The director and I may have discussed a low setting sun in a particular scene. Now, with the set drawings in front of me, I can figure out where that light can be placed. The ideas developed in our production meetings combined with my own notes begin to be translated into a lighting system for the play.

The analysis of the space is critical. Be it a built set or a found space, every one is different and each demands its own lighting approach. During the concept meetings it is very important that the scenic designer and I work in close collaboration to facilitate the design ideas. It is unfortunate for everyone when ideas discussed for weeks or months turn out to be unrealizable because the set was not designed to accommodate them. In the same way, my work must accommodate the needs of the scenery and costumes, and render the colors and forms true to my collaborator's vision.

This is perhaps the most personal part of the process for me. Up to now everything has been based around reactions to external stimuli. I have been reacting to the text, to the set, to my collaborators. Now I am at the point where I choose how I want to engage with them. Do I accentuate the angles of the space or compress them? Do I push the colors further or hold them back? Obviously these are not either/or questions but rather a matter of degree.

My first step is to analyze the set as a formal volumetric object. I try as best as possible to leave aside my notions of the play and simply look at the set as an empty space into which light can move. I will abstract the set to its basic forms and look at it thusly. Some are quite simple, a rectangle perhaps or a circle, while others are very dynamic and complex. As I begin to break the set down into simple geometric shapes, patterns emerge that show me how light can move. This analysis provides a sense of where lighting can and should be symmetrical and where that symmetry should break. While most of my final compositions tend to be asymmetrical, it can be incredibly useful for the lighting systems to be as symmetrical as possible. One achieves asymmetry then by simply turning off half the system.

Every space allows light to move in a particular way. Long spaces are more conducive to sidelight while walled-in spaces more easily allow backlight. Every play will use a variety of lighting angles, colors and textures. Many of these choices are guided by the set. This is why a close collaboration is so important. If a low angled sidelight is wanted, there had better not be a wall in the way. So too can ceilings, often beautiful, be problematic when not part of an overall conceptual approach to the text. It is critical that all members of the creative team be on the same page with regards to the visual needs of the play.

With my analysis complete I begin building the systems. Going back to my notes, I turn that sidelight into the afternoon sun or that diagonal backlight into the late night moon. I build my systems without specific concern for color or texture. I will note "warm" or "cool" or "leafy" but leave the specifics for once all the lights are placed.

Throughout this phase I keep two thoughts in mind. First, everything I do must facilitate the overall concept and second, the concept may change.

That first thought is rather straight forward. I translate the ideas into a lighting system. I find some way to express visually each idea we have discussed. Sometimes every idea will have their own light or system of lights and other times there are several ideas that can be combined into one system.

That second thought is a bit more nebulous. While we all like to think that we will come up with a perfectly workable concept in meetings and rehearsal, the truth is sometimes we put everything on stage and it just doesn't work. It thus becomes necessary to devise a lighting system that has the capacity to become something wholly other than originally designed to be. This has led to a development in American and English lighting design to use a large number of small spotlights working in concert to cover the stage from a particular direction. If the whole stage wants to be filled with that idea of a harsh noon sun you turn them all on. But you may find that the follow-spot idea for the soliloquies does not work in tech and what you want is a backlight special. Then you simply turn on one light from the noon sun idea and you have special lighting for that one moment.

Once my lights are all placed, and control channels/circuiting assigned I move on to color and texture. The palette of colors and patterns is critical for showing off the set and costumes and performers in their best light. The wrong color choice can turn a brilliantly colored set grey, or cause an amazingly dynamic costume to appear lifeless. So too can the effect of color on skin tones make someone appear with a healthy glow or sick and wasted. All these effects may be the right choice in the moment, but they must be chosen and the desired effect created at the proper time.

The color and texture palette in many ways sets the tone for the piece. It also serves as a kind of visual glue with regards to how the scenery and costumes interact. Be the design multi-colored or a tightly controlled range, the lighting is integral to unifying the visual experience for the audience.

Choosing the wrong color could make a secondary character more prominent than the lead, or give presence to the scenery over the performers. It is a delicate balancing act that necessitates a close visual reading of the design renderings. Just as the written text had to be read and analyzed so too does the emerging visual text need to be read and analyzed. The difference between a yellow-green or a blue-green can mean the success or failure of the whole lighting scheme. The right color can make a dress shine like the sun with very little light, while the wrong color can result in you pouring thousands of watts of light onto it with little to no impact.

Not only must the lighting work in relation to the scenery and costumes, it must also maintain integrity relative to itself. The final construction of the lighting plot is a delicate balancing act. For the lighting designer, it is the most private aspect of the whole play making process and yet it is the part that soon will become the most public.

NOTE: This series originally appeared about a year ago at the Parabasis blog. It outlines my process for lighting a play. What follows is part two of four. Enjoy!

Having read through the play several times and made all necessary notes I am ready for my first meeting with the director and the rest of the creative team. Every show develops its own unique artistic shorthand and these meetings are critical for creating the language used to discuss the play as a collaborative team. Because of this, it is important to do my preliminary homework on each play such that we can quickly move past the surface issues and get into the meat of the work.

I like to begin by finding out from the director what the play means to them. I want to know what they like about the piece and what is driving them to create the work. The preliminary work I have done before this meeting gets me acquainted with the text itself. The text is the story as well as the linguistic or musical style in which that story is told. Now, using that as a base, the focus shifts to developing the visual style in which we are going to tell that story.

At this point, or soon after, I like to go through a play scene by scene, discussing each in detail. Doing my preliminary work before this meeting is invaluable as it allows my presence to be proactive and engaged in these early discussions. The first design meetings are critical to the final product. Here we are planting the seeds of what will later blossom into a new work of art. The more engaged and proactive I can be, the stronger my work is and in the end, the stronger the project as a whole.

The role of lighting designer is one that requires you to take a big picture view. The lighting is often the visual glue that holds together scenery, costumes and staging. As such, I often find myself acting as a stylistic arbiter, "If we make that choice there, it impacts the following scene thusly." In these meetings, I will present all my ideas for the play, be they for lighting or any other aspect of the design. Sometimes, the best ideas do not come from the designer. Being receptive to and willing to engage with other people's design ideas makes the collaborative process stronger. Just as I have solved plenty of staging problems, I have had my share of costume designers solve lighting problems, etc. The key to this collaborative process being a success is maintaining a clear focus on the show as the most important thing in the room. In order for that to happen, all decisions must be grounded by the text.

Collaboration is an art form unto itself. It takes constant practice and vigilant effort to negotiate a collaborative art form like the theater. Knowing when to press your case and when to back down is no easy matter. So long as your sights are set on creating the best work possible, even when tempers flare, you know it is for a good cause. By always returning to the text, you find a guiding principal at work that should resolve any dispute.

One director friend of mine is convinced that designers meet up without the director to plot "their" vision of the play. While this is a bit extreme, variations on the theme do exist. Rather than creating good design, I have found this to be nothing more than a recipe for disaster. It can be useful to have your own vision for the text, but only so far as the director implicitly understands the design concept and can guide the acting style and staging to be harmonious with the visual environment.

The designer is not there to create an interesting installation. Were that the case, we would be sculptors or painters or installation artists. The designer, just like the director, is there to further the storytelling of the play. We are all ultimately responsible to the text. Be the work actor driven, director driven or designer driven, the final product will only work when all those elements operate in concert, each heightening the other.

This whole process, at its root, is about furthering the vision of the director. I have seen too many failed shows where it appeared as though the design team had rammed a concept down the director's throat without the director's understanding of what was going on visually. This manner of working is more a failure of the design team than the director. Some directors know exactly what they want, others don't but think that they do. Still others are quite upfront about not having a clear visual take on a play. But all of these people know the story they want to tell. It is our job to help them tell that story. If the staging does not work with the design concept then all we have is decoration. Without a full integration of staging and design, the show might as well happen in an empty room with street clothes and fluorescent lighting. A good design is not simply setting, clothing and illumination. A good design is the visual expression of a particular reading of the text.

In graduate school I had the amazing good fortune to work with Rumanian director Liviu Ciulei. I was told horror story after horror story by my fellow classmates about how "difficult" he was. What I discovered was this so called difficulty was simply a highly specific clarity of vision. I'll admit the first day and a half was one of the most difficult tech experiences of my life. But once I saw what he saw, once I could "get behind his eyes," the whole process became a breeze. Seeing the stage through his eyes, I solved problems before they arose.

Just as when I am doing my preliminary work in the studio, my own thinking in these early meetings stays away from specific lighting instruments. When speaking with a director I avoid any technical talk. Instead of lekos and fresnels I talk about the warm glow of a setting sun or the romantic blue of the moon. I do begin to formulate rough ideas for scenes, but keep it well away from the world of jargon. My focus, as we move through the play scene by scene, is to deepen my understanding of the emotional needs inherent in each.

Depending on the path my own preliminary work took, my meetings with the director will often follow a similar route. If my work was deeply rooted in words and text there might be a lot of talking. If I found visual research to be my main source of inspiration I will use that. Whatever route we take, it is critical to remember that this is a journey through a text. A text that is filled with people and ideas and emotions and all of these things must be addressed. Just as "idea plays" often have strong emotion, deeply emotional pieces contain within them powerful ideas.

By keeping the discussion grounded by the emotional tenor of the play and firmly rooted in text, I give the director greater access to my thought process and avoid knee jerk reactions of my own. Talking through the quality of light makes my responses more specific to the needs of the piece and makes the final product stronger. While talking through the quality of light and the emotional needs of each scene, we begin to build a visual vocabulary for the play that will serve as a map when I return to the studio and transform a warm setting sun into a Head-High PAR Boom.