Light Cue 23

I see very little purpose to art that does not in some way make visible that which is otherwise invisible. At a literal level this might apply to my love of lighting design, but at a deeper level it is even more true. Approaching a text as a kind of hypothetical, one can see many avenues an eventual production could go down. The Greeks have been performed in everything from Togas to business suits to both at the same time. How the characters are clothed, how the performance space is designed/chosen, how the scenes are lit, are all responses to the initial question the text asks. Sometimes these aspects of production respond in the form of an answer and sometimes another question. Sometimes both.

The idea of revealing what was otherwise unseen is important to keep in mind. I had a wonderful moment in tech the other night. We were lighting the last scene of act one, and after we had got through it we took a break. The lighting for the first act roughly takes on an arc of colorful to clear light. The focus shifts in the lighting from an awareness of its chromatic nature to light as the compliment of shadow. I spoke with the writer/director about it and she said she was very pleased, but had never intended the scene to be, as she said “black and white” but that for her it helped anchor a scene that is heavily imagistic and can easily run the risk of falling into caricature.

It is not as if lighting alone can create an idea that is not already present. The language of light does not work that way. Light is more akin to the photographers lens. It does not create a situation. Rather, it frames a scenario and through that framing reveals and places focus upon something that might otherwise not be noticed. It can make the unconscious conscious. The invisible visible. It exists in that space between presence and absence, being at once a wave and a particle. It rides that liminal space and therein lies its power.

As Peter Brook says in The Empty Space, “to comprehend the visibility of the invisible is a life’s work. Holy art is an aid to this, and so we arrive at a definition of holy theatre. A holy theatre not only presents the invisible but also offers conditions that make its perception possible.” That perception of the invisible is central to the nature of light. To guide and focus attention such that the multiplicity of the layers of reality become perceived at once. The expansion of visual consciousness is an essential aspect to an art form like theatre where one has multiple vectors of sensory and mental stimulation through which to negotiate.

I am not sure that light ever gives an answer. The more I think upon it, the more it seems to me to be a medium devoted to questioning. Light asks fundamental questions about the nature of the subject it illuminates. What is this thing? Why is it here? And what does it do? But it asks them in the form on a statement. And herein lies some of the mystery to me of the nature of light. It is a question masquerading as a statement. The wave that is also particle, asks something new every time it states a response to a question.

In many ways light is the forward movement behind action in the dialectical process that is the creation of a work of theatre. At least for the visual component. Light synthesizes all the visual elements, setting, costume and staging, to create a new thesis. And light is a thesis that demands an anti-thesis. By its very presence it creates its opposite in shadow. The same with color. Take two identical lights and color one of them pink, then other looks green. Light is wholly relational and never exists outside some context. It can not be seen without something to bounce off of. Invisible itself, it makes visible the otherwise invisible.