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.
