When Heather Carson called me up and asked if I would like to assist her on Richard Foreman’s latest show I jumped at the opportunity. Heather’s lighting sense is unique in the theater world and Richard has functionally created his own genre of theater. The opportunity to watch these two theater artists at work together was one I could not pass up.
Most theater lighting in America follows a familiar pattern. The designer hangs many little spotlights (the current vogue is the Source-4 by ETC) just about everywhere they can pointing towards every possible place an actor might stand so that they can be lit variously from the front, the back, or the side. The system is rather rigid and for the most part much of the work looks the same. This is not to say that the work can’t be quite beautiful. On the contrary, part of this system’s popularity is its success in creating a wide array of beautiful imagery. It can do a lot, but it can not do everything.
This mode of working represents only one way of seeing. It is a manifestation of a worldview firmly rooted in 20th century mechanistic production. It works well for the entertainment industry because it follows the rules of industry. It is easily mass reproducible on a large scale and utilizes uniform parts that may be quickly and simply exchanged one for the other. Any 19 Degree Source-4 will produce the same quality of light as any other.
In short it is a kind of artistic assembly line. Assembly lines can be amazing. After all we would not have the ’57 Chevy, one of the most beautiful objects created by humanity, were it not for the assembly line. As beautiful as these works are they represent a single way of seeing. A ’57 Chevy, for all it’s assembly line glory, is fundamentally different than a Duesenberg which would have the body and interior individually crafted by master coach builders. In the same way, the mode of seeing represented by Heather and Richard is of a fundamentally different order than the standard assembly line production style of the American theater.
With Richard the lighting is an aesthetic world unto itself. Rather than merely sculpting actors, the light collides with the world of the play in sometimes beautiful, sometimes ugly ways. It is a narrative subject deserving of its own metaphysic, much like character and dialog is in traditional plays. Heather brings to the work a deep inquiry into the ontology of light itself. Her work is concerned in large part with the very Being of Light and the Being of lights. For both of them the lighting is not presented as an answer to a problem per se, but rather as a line of questioning in search of discovery.
Enter the Public Theater, one of the great New York producing organizations, a leader in the non-profit theater world. They do the standard American style of theater producing as good as anyone. Not only do they produce a large volume of work they welcome aesthetic risk into their operation. Richard Foreman, while a leader of the New York avante garde, is quite risky for a large cross-section of the New York theater going audience particularly the more mainstream audiences who attend the Public. By bringing him in the artistic staff and administration is not only taking some risk with their audience they are saying that such risk is outweighed by the sufficient artistic merit of the work that Richard Foreman brings to the stage.
These two modes of working collide in a rather striking way when the theater making experience gets into the practicalities of where a light should point. During a lighting focus with Richard and Heather (they are both there and equal participants at an artistic level) each light is not simply turned on and put in its place in the assembly line. Rather the light is turned on and then considered as a subject unto itself. A dialog between them ensues. The light is not an answer to a problem so much as it is a doorway opening into a world of possibility. Because of this a lighting focus must be taken slowly with each light well considered, its possibilities noted and its potential use questioned.
We took two days to focus the lights. The first day went quite well, with a good humor in the room and the time taken to carefully consider each possibility. The second day a member of the theater staff who had not been present the day before attempted to change the mode of working. Rather than allowing the process to move along as it had been there was a request to shift into the traditional assembly-line mode. When that happened, the system broke down. Confusion ensued as the artists who had been more than comfortable became unable to work. Upon my initiative we returned to the slow and careful mode of working and were able to finish the process ahead of schedule.
Richard and Heather’s way of creating is quite foreign to many people who regularly work in the American theater. But it is how we deal with the foreign that truly displays our mastery of a subject. Successfully managing routine shows only that we are a slightly specialized machine. Adapting to difficult and foreign environments and situations, transforming your typical way of approaching a subject when all the given circumstances are different than you are used to, displays a deep and profound understanding of your field.
I remember several years ago assisting Heather at San Francisco Opera. Her style then, as now, was quite different from our standard fare at that institution. Yet we took every measure to ensure that the artistic integrity of the lighting could be maintained specifically by working with and within her aesthetic. Richard, to give himself the freedom to work in the manner he prefers, has been producing his plays with his own company for decades.
The proper roll of the support and technical staff is not to impose their way of working on an artist. It is to facilitate the work of the artist. Having been on both sides of that equation I am familiar with several ways of looking at this situation. That is the key issue that I have been trying to get at here. The assembly line mode of seeing is not wrong or bad or ugly. The assembly line mode of seeing is but one way of seeing. It is one language of theatrical production. To assume that it is the only way of seeing is a mistake.
When we are talking about making art the only mistake one can truly make is to assume they are right. Art is about questioning. It is about process. Rightness and answers are about finality. They are the end of movement and the closing of doors. If all you do is look for the fastest solution, you might miss a glorious question just waiting to be asked. Answers are doors at best and walls at worst. Taking the time to ask a question is taking the time to open a door, peek inside and discover what may be hiding there.
Excellent. An insightful comment on the American theatre methodology, and an issue that we all have dealt with.