Light Cue 23

I often find myself designing the same show twice. No I am not talking about being hired by two different producers for the same play, I am talking about lighting in spaces that have a lower orchestra level roughly in line with the stage and a balcony (or two) that is much higher up and thus a very different angle from and view of the stage.

I have sat through far too many shows in the balcony where the lighting designer had essentially forgotten anyone was not sitting in the prime orchestra level. These shows had houses where the lovely light through the trees miraculously did not light the roof of the house. Where, in fact, the sun itself did not light the roof of, say, the house or upstage of a large piece of scenery. Sure, lighting for the critics who sit in these prime seats is a good idea, but to ignore half to more of your audience is insensitive at best. The experience will never be the same for the people sitting in these respective seats. The viewing angle is different, one is closer than the other, etc. However, while not the same, they can and should be equally interesting and engaging experiences for the audience.

Many shows, once you get up into the balcony levels, immediately become wide open blank spaces of boring dull color. This is because too often the lighting designer ignores the floor as a potential canvass. It is interesting that a designer who will spend countless hours designing a sky that will only be seen by a minority of patrons seated in the orchestra misses an amazing opportunity to provide an equally powerful experience to the rest of the audience.

If the sky is the background for the orchestra, the floor is the background for the balconies. There is nothing incredibly special about how floors need to be treated. The fundamental problem is that they are too often simply ignored. The same or similar techniques apply to floors as apply to skies. Color serves as a major component of the tool box available. On equal or greater footing is texture. Patterns, as well as areas of light and dark, become critical to the visual storytelling necessary to give a satisfactory experience to the balcony audience.

A well designed floor is very much like a well designed sky. It furthers the storytelling and heightens or reveals otherwise hidden aspects of the performance. This may be most obvious in a musical, but the same rule applies to dramatic works as well. Perhaps the lighting on the floor is not textured, but then the use of strong and dramatic areas of light and dark may be employed. Perhaps strong shafts of light cutting across the stage are cast. Perhaps pools of light that contain word and action tightly bound.

What the balconies do not have access to is a lot of the sculptural work designers enjoy doing on the performers. Because of the relative angle of viewer and performer, the subtlety and nuance of angle changes often gets lost. What replaces this is the use of shadows. Too often I find a muddy and unclear use of shadows. Again, this is a product of designing for the orchestra, without concern for the balconies. Having a clear and clean vision of where the performer’s shadows will land helps to give a more valuable experience to the balcony audience.

This kind of floor work is very strong among German opera designers and European designers in general. More often than not I find the work of these designers to be as much or more about shadow as it is about light. This is in sharp distinction to much of American design where the emphasis is on the light. Even shadows are treated with some faint light or color as though exploring pure darkness were too frightening a proposition.

By clearly using shadows, one is also making strong choices in key lighting scenes and performers. I find far too many designers and/or directors and choreographers who are afraid of exploring darkness. Who are afraid of shadow. But embracing shadow leads to a stronger visual image. This is true not only for those seated in the balconies but those in the orchestra as well. In my experience, the more one balances these two seemingly competing demands, the more each one is strengthened.

In the end, by taking into account the visual needs of the whole audience, the designer is giving a better and more enriching experience to the whole audience. Providing the best possible work to the audience necessitates this kind of holistic design approach. One must ensure that no aspect of the work is left unattended. The floor is a critical design element from the scenic perspective and must be treated as such from lighting designers as well.