Light Cue 23

I wrote yesterday about treating a playscript as a kind of proposition rather than a definitive statement. The example used was of Charles Mee’s Big Love. I took that play for an example of a text that leaves space open to the imagination of the director, actors and designers. The thought was, however, incomplete. Just as it is important to leave a text open, so too is it necessary to leave a production open to the imagination of the audience. It is important in a design to not follow the narrative literally or, to be more precise, it is important to find those moments where the design can set itself against the text. As Mee says, “It should not be a set for the piece to play within but rather something against which the piece can resonate.”

The idea that the setting is “something against which the piece can resonate” indicates a kind of amplification. A chorus sung by word and image. Constructing a context wherein the actuality of the text is taken to a new level far surpassing what the text lays out on its own. Further, it is possible to open up the text in ways that are not possible with more literal interpretations. But whenever and however this is done, it is best done as a kind of question. It is deadly to design a piece in such a way that it says “this is what the play is about.” Then we have a monologue. Then we are in a classroom. The imaginative potential of the Theatre becomes lost is a sea of didacticism.

Lighting often should follow at least a rough literalism. Night is darker than day. Sunsets are warmer colors than high noon. Etc. etc. etc. I say “often should” because there are certainly instances where the opposite, or something else entirely is called for. The joke goes “When is a door not a door? When it is ajar.” Hahahaha! But this does get to an interesting point. When is night no longer night? When do we leave the world of day and night and enter into some other psychological or magical place? When do we start asking questions about where we are rather than simply accepting the given circumstances?

I think first to the American Musical Comedy. As a genre of narrative storytelling it truly is quite psychologically powerful. The rules of the world are given. We are in a place that is recognizable, perhaps it is a modern city. We see two people talking to one another and they speak in a language we understand so we follow their conversation until suddenly one of them can no longer use language to express what they are trying to describe. Perhaps the question inherent in the statement becomes too pressing. And all of a sudden, they burst into song and dance. The world is transformed. Colors pour into this world that we never see in nature. Songs are sung and people dance in a way that even the most severe psychotic cases would not do. The inner world of the mind has become manifest in the exterior reality.

And then.

As soon as it all began,
it stops.

And the characters leave us, talking.

These moments occur in traditional plays as well, though perhaps not to such a degree. Think the Shakespearean soliloquy. An escape from the mundane realities of the world into the mind of the character. Where are we in these moments? Is Iago’s night, the same night as everyone else’s?

Light, like music, intersects a play in the realm of time and rhythm. Sure, space and volume are a concern, but that is an intersection with scenery and staging. As far as the text goes, light is concerned with time. And rhythm.

The setting, the scenery, exists as a kind of thesis. A first interpretation of the play. A kind of affirmation. The play is. The play is what? Whatever this play is. The setting is a first postulate. A foundation. A thesis. The lighting operates as a response. An anti-thesis. It is not opposed to the original in a combative sense, but rather enters into a dialog with the thesis to negotiate meaning. In a similar way, the costumes set forth a thesis about the characters. The people in this play are such and such. And again the negotiation begins. But now we have the setting, lighting and costume. All this without even addressing the text itself. Merely how these elements act in relationship to the text.

When the text proposes itself as a question it allows these negotiations to take on a strong and dynamic character. When the design and staging of a play enter into dialog with the text as a series of open ended questions, it leaves room in the mind of the audience to complete the idea. In the final analysis the play as experience becomes complete through the negotiation of the audience with the production. When left as a question, or series of questions, the audience leaves thinking and talking. They leave engaged with the play. The Theatre can not answer any questions, nor can it solve any social or political problems. But it can provide the means for people to begin asking questions once again and perhaps to open the doorway to mystery and possibility.