Posts Tagged ‘lighting design’

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The Space of Imagination

Monday, September 4th, 2006

A while back Ian said something to the effect of “there is no such thing as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Rather the thing we call the Ninth is a question.” He was making a clear parallel between the composition of an orchestral piece of music and the playscript. Written work for the theatre is not literature and does not exist on its own. Certainly good writing has strong literary qualities but it is not, or rather should not be, intended to be read except as a tool to get to performance.

I have heard a lot of writers of late bemoaning the lack of full productions of new works in favor of staged readings. It is a shame, because there is no way in a staged reading to get a full sense of the kinetic potential that a play hold within it. This is why things like SPF are so wonderful. A playscript is not a dynamic thing in the same way that a map is not. They each may be beautifully rendered, but until you are traversing the countryside searching for your destination among the hills and trees and sunlight, you do not know the true beauty that the map points to.

I believe fairly strongly that whatever does not appear in the dialog of a text is not inherent to the play. It might be quite important to the script, and it may serve a necessary function of setting the production in the right direction but unless it exists in the words spoken by the characters it is not necessary. If a scene needs to be set in a cafe one of the characters will say at some point, “My, what a wonderful little cafe this is!” Or some other bit. But more often than not what is needed is an emotional context in which the performers must negotiate their relationships.

One of my favorite stage directions comes from Charles Mee’s Big Love

This is Italy:
rose and white.

If Emanuel Ungaro had a villa on the west coast of Italy, this would be it:
we are outdoors,
on the terrace or in the garden,
facing the ocean:

wrought iron
white muslin
flowers
a tree
an arbor
an outdoor dinner table with chairs for six
a white marble balustrade
elegant
simple
basic
eternal.

But the setting for the piece should not be real, or naturalistic.
It should not be a set for the piece to play within
but rather something against which the piece can resonate:
something on the order of a bathtub, 100 olive trees,
and 300 wine glasses half-full of red wine.

More an installation than a set.

It is midsummer evening–the long, long golden twilight.

The beauty is not in the literalism, but in how it so clearly evokes a visual style. Wim Wenders talks about reading stories as a young child and coming to the realization that the real life of the books came out in the spaces between the letters. In those places left open to the imagination. So too must a text for the Theatre be left open to the imagination of the actors, director and designers. This is not in any way to say that any one of these people’s opinion should trump the language. What it is saying is that the language is best served by being approached as a proposition, a question, rather than a definitive statement.

Tenessee Williams understood this fact quite well. He knew that in the end what is on stage in front of an audience is far greater than the language itself. Thus, he was able to see Jo Mielziner‘s designs for A Streetcar Named Desire and rewrote the play to more strongly reflect its life on the stage. But this same example is a warning to designers and directors who would too soon abandon a playwrights intent. Several of the lighting effects that generated critical praise in the original production came directly from the written playscript.

The final product on stage is not the creation of any one individual, but rather the result of a collective negotiation between numerous people striving for the same goal. The making of a play is a constant negotiation. Ideas are brought forth and tested in light of other ideas. One pushing the other slightly aside, or transforming the meaning of another to match some new form. It is a beautiful and organic thing to watch happen.

I personally find it most interesting when the elements do not all mesh perfectly. When the whole does not fall into the hypnotic seduction of false empathy. Rather, to see the various elements stand a bit apart from one another in a constant negotiation between text and subtext, between the real and the imaginary. Because in the end, those lines are not so hard and fast, even in our daily life. The life of the mind is not a different thing than the life of the body in society.

Mielziner’s design for Streetcar is a perfect example of this merging of the life of the real and the life of the mind. We all must negotiate, as Blanche must, the interior life and the exterior reality. Sometimes they are harmonious and sometimes they come into sharp conflict with one another. It is this negotiation that is at the heart of the text and is also visually manifested in the design.

I have garnered for myself a reputation for unconventional lighting. That reputation has caused me to be hired for several projects where the producer or director wanted an “unconventional” approach to the lighting. I have written about this before. Is my work unconventional? Some people thought it was. Just as it was considered by some unconventional to light a dance with only bare lightbulbs. To me, I was just trying to understand the text. Attempting to get at the core of the spacio-rhythmic structure of the piece. I certainly do not try to be unconventional and I hope I am not “always” unconventional. Rather, I simply try to translate the structure of the work into a visual language that can enter into dialog with everything else on stage.

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On Simultaneity – The Negotiation of Color and Music

Thursday, August 31st, 2006

One can take . . . all the themes that have been privileged until now by deconstructive strategy: that is, presence, consciousness, sign, theme, thesis, etc. One cannot imagine oneself alive renouncing all consciousness, all presence, all ethics of language: and yet this is precisely what must be deconstructed. One must try to think what it is that makes us unable to “do without.” Thus, on the one hand, the very menacing character of deconstruction. But, at the same time, it does not threaten anything because it is not a question of destroying what there is to deconstruct. Although phantasmatic, the threat is not, however, imaginary, and this explains the affective charge, the terrorized violence of the resentment and reactions against “deconstruction.” Negotiation operates in the very place of threat, where one must with vigilance venture as far as possible into what appears threatening and at the same time maintain a minimum of security – and also an internal security not to be carried away by this threat. This, too, is negotiation.
An essential aspect of negotiation is that it is always different, differential, not only from one individual to another, from one situation to another, but even for the same individual, from one moment to the next. There is no general law, there is no general rule of negotiation. Negotiation is different at every moment, from one context to the next. There are only contexts, and this is why deconstructive negotiation cannot produce general rules, “methods.” It must be adjusted to each case, to each moment without, however, the conclusion being a relativism or empiricism. This is the difficulty. That there is something like an absolute rule of negotiation that can only be adjusted to political, historical situations.
-Jacques Derrida, Negotiations

I was trying to understand the idea of simultaneity and totally failed until I realized that simultaneity does not exist temporally, but rather is an experiential moment. A popular current in music these days is the “Mash-Up” but the Mash-Up is really nothing new. In fact it is a simple evolution of what the Hip-Hop scratch DJ does. It is what early House music did. Take two otherwise unrelated pieces of music and interweave them into a new sonic experience. It is this characteristic of newness that really grabbed me. The two cease being two and become one. And in that moment of synthesis, simultaneity ceases and experience is born.

John Cage‘s Indeterminacy is a classic example of simultaneity. Yet it is a single experience of word and noise colliding in a wholly new experience. Joseph Albers was famous for his ideas surrounding color theory. He made explicit the point that colors are relational, rather than operating as a fixed system. If that is true of pigments, it is doubly true of light.

It is possible to make a common lightbulb appear blue, now green, now pink simply by altering the context in which we find this bulb. The color of light is not inherent, but rather relational. When creating a composition based upon multiple colors it is an inherent act of negotiation. The one impacting the other, each altering the fundamentals of the other. No single color can remain on its own. They are both relationally and contextually defined. The color experience, then, is an instance of simultaneity that is not simultaneity, but rather a mash-up experience.

By playing with the tensions inherent to color in the medium of light it is possible to make a figure appear at once beautiful and ugly. By defining a subject through the use of color on the one hand and contextually defining it as the opposite of that color. In a similar way one can make a distant subject more prominent than a near subject thus unsettling the notion of physical space upon a stage.

Opera is an extreme experience in simultaneity. One has music and dance and song and sculpture and light and shadow and fabric and yet no one of these elements can be successfully extracted from the whole. Rather the experience is a relational system whereby every element feeds into and both defines and negates every other aspect of the experience. The humming chorus in Madama Butterfly is a long section of an opera that is about a light cue. Yet by decentering the Subject, Butterfly, and placing her as static and passive observer, one falls even further into the thrall of the subject. In essence, she is most present when she is absent. Which in a way is the point of the opera, that she only exists as symbol, and dies the moment she becomes woman. The “Other” can only exist as a symbol, and must be denied dimensionality.

This moment does not give us any answers, nor any definitive insights into the nature of our heroine. It does however ask an important question. What is the tension inherent in the Subject? A Subject can not exist without a context whereby there are Objects. Thus, the Subject, whole within its own subjective experience, must also always already exist as Object to another. Butterfly, made Object by Pinkerton, is made Subject once again by the rising sun. And the negotiation continues.

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Fluorescent lighting is Sweet

Thursday, August 24th, 2006

In 1998 I stage managed Sweet Self written by Zay Amsbury and directed by Josh Costello. We did this show in an ultra low-budget fashion, having quite literally no money. Being the Stage Manager meant I called places and then ran the sound cues. There were no lighting cues. We performed in the multi purpose room of a senior center. We had hideous orange plastic chairs for “scenery” and the fluorescent lights in the room were just on. I think we did a blackout at the top and at the end. The actors were all visible throughout the performance, sitting in chairs “off-stage” but still in plain view. The audience was configured in a 3/4 Round.

It was amazing.

The show was so strong and the dramatic tension so high that after the first scene one almost forgot about the fluorescent lighting and the orange chairs. It was there that I developed a certain philosophy of theatre and the importance of design. Now, I know there are exceptions to this, Robert Wilson being an immediate one that comes to mind, but for 99% of theatre productions I believe the following to be true. Any show should be complete and dramatically compelling when performed under worklights and in rehearsal clothes.

Now I also firmly believe that design is a necessary element to a work. It can illuminate and reveal aspects of the play and nuance that would otherwise be missed. It can create a visual focus upon which to organize the events of the play. It helps bring an audience into the world of the play such that they can fully experience that complete and dramatically compelling event. But, design is not the world of the play. Scenery and costumes offer up an interpretation of the text and the action. They operate as a kind of framing device for the play. Lighting and sound serve to mark the passage of time and weave into the text at a temporo-structural level. But the play is the words and the staging. And the actors must be seen and clothed(or naked) but these are all choices, and they are all design. Even if the choice is to use the objects found in the performance venue, that is a design choice.

I had dinner with Josh last night and we got into a three or four hour discussion of Romeo and Juliet. It was a great discussion focusing mostly on the death of Mercutio as the central turning point in the play and how that relates to one of the Prince’s final lines and that to the entirety of the action of the play.

See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.

What was so fun about this is that Josh has a strong understanding of Shakespeare, as evidenced by the writing on his blog. But more than that, having worked with him several times before I know how good he is as a director and thus it was not just idle chatter but strong ideas that could be transformed into dramatically compelling action.

One of the last plays we worked on together was House of Lucky at The Magic in San Francisco. That was a full production at a LORT theatre. A far cry from the multi purpose room of a few years before. Yet the show had started in that same room, with those same fluorescent lights and orange chairs. It had already proven to be complete and dramatically compelling. The addition of the lighting and scenery only added to the dramatic story telling.

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More Cupid and Psyche

Tuesday, August 15th, 2006

I just got some new photos from the costume designer. Here they are.

apaph

graveyard

hell

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The Power of Technology

Friday, August 4th, 2006

I truly do not understand how people worked in the theatre before cell phones. I have three shows opening next week. Two for the fringe and one an open rehearsal of a piece in progress. The tech times for these are scattered about the week and very VERY brief. The Unlucky Man in the Yellow Cap opens Friday, Why I should not Fuck my Son opens Saturday, and the open rehearsal for Ajax is on Sunday. It’s a lot to keep in one’s head.

So of course while I am running around town for rehearsals and meetings and so forth yesterday, things are being rescheduled and I am trying to keep it all in my head. Without being able to get in touch with people while walking form a meeting to the subway I am not sure I could get it all coordinated. I am quite amazed at how efficient technology can make us. It is possible to do almost literally hundreds or thousands more tasks in a day because of the ease of technology. Imagine, whoever came up with the idea of taking those heavy rocks and putting them on top of a wood plank with some round stones underneath. Genius! And it just keeps going.

Lighting design is so dominated by technology one might think I would get sick of it. Perhaps at times I do. But all in all I just find it so fascinating. The complex things that are possible to do with computerized lighting systems is just astounding. The myriad shifting and transforming hues and intensities of a sunset can be quite accurately recreated. The subtle transformations throughout the day can be minutely dissected and brought to life on the stage.

All this available technology and three shows that could strongly benefit from it and yet, the restrictions of a festival setting essentially remove any of that wonderful benefit. The Phaedra adaptation is a kind of wacky Mash-Up Musical that truly calls for complex and sophisticated lighting, but it will most likely receive the bare minimum. The Man in the Yellow Cap also a kind of musical, has a kind of specificity and delicacy that is difficult if not impossible to maintain in a festival setting. Ajax, while not part of a festival, has similar limitations, at least in terms of budget for a workshop.

Every time I am faced with these kinds of limitations I am reminded of the degree to which every piece demands its own specific approach. Every play, or opera, or musical demands that it be treated in a unique way. The color pallet is different and the angles are different and the sense of time is different. Producing much of anything in a repertory situation like these is always a compromise of the most unfortunate variety. It is an extreme compromise of aesthetics in favor of economics and efficiency.

The issue of time always exists in the theatre. There is never enough. That is simply a reality of the field. But there is “not enough time” and then there is insufficient time to do the work. Even one day or a half a day of technical rehearsals allows one to get some kind of shape to a piece. But only a few hours gets you rough illumination. Not allowing any real specificity precludes any true creative expression.

This is a frustrating but always present aspect to the festival situation. I have done many of these and they all tend towards variations of the same thing. Some better, some worse, but all in all a real pain for anyone honestly interested in creating strong beautiful works.

Looking in another direction, this looks like an interesting use of technology in theatre. I am still very glad not to be returning to SF Opera this season and instead focusing more fully on my design work. And now, back to work.

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Outstanding News

Tuesday, July 18th, 2006

I have been nominated for Outstanding Lighting Design for Cupid and Psyche by the Innovative Theatre Awards. My fellow designer on the show (and NYU alum) Michael Moore was also nominated for Outstanding Set Design. He is a fabulous designer and infinitely pleasant to work with. One of the most cheerful under pressure personalities I have ever encountered. His work was truly fantastic on the show. I sadly do not have any pictures of Cupid and Psyche yet, so if you did not see it you will have to imagine.

I did not stay very long at the event as the air conditioning was broken and it was uncomfortably hot inside. Too bad because it could have been quite a fun evening, but it seems that most of the folk left shortly after the announcements. I ran into my director for Ajax on the way out. One of her actors was nominated for best solo performance for In Delirium. The three of us left right after the announcements and got food across the street at the falafal place formerly known as Cinderella on 2nd Ave. They do an amazing falafal, I survived on them for two years when I worked for the NYU Dance Department.

The greatest thing about the evening was seeing a new misspelling of my name. I have seen Lukas, Luca, Benjamin, Kreche, Kresh, Crech, Krecsch and Kresch. This new one was a misspelling of my middle name, it was “Bengaminh.” For the record, the correct spelling of my name is “Lucas Benjaminh Krech.” I once had a program corrected three times by two different people and they still got it wrong in the final printing. So much for cut and paste.

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Gooses! Geeses!

Wednesday, June 14th, 2006

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Technology and Designing the Metanarrative

Friday, April 21st, 2006

In thinking about creative consciousness we must understand the context in which it arises. This has been approached in fiction writing extensively in the work of Grant Morrison. From the blunt exercises in Animal Man to the complexly subtle role of Barbelith in The Invisibles to the oblique synthesis that occurs in The Filth. In all of these, in different ways, is an object of creation attempting to come to terms with its own birth.

Thinking of a work of art as a living being might put some people off but I feel it is a more accurate model than to look at it as a mere object. After all a work of art engages in a complex network of social, economic and cultural forces. When The Mahagonny Songspiel premiered at Baden/Baden in 1927 it caused riots to break out. This then is no passive object, but a dynamic and forceful actor engaging in the cultural dynamics of society. Works of art do not simply send out energy, they also take it in and can become part of a larger cultural feedback loop.

Art is a kind of communication technology of the soul. It provides a conduit for the ideas locked inside one self to manifest in the world and be transmitted to another. If we were to try and understand what this process looks like, we might get something akin to this:

In The End of the Moon, Laurie Anderson talks about her time as NASA’s artist in residence. In one section she mentions how the coloration of nebulas that we see in NASA photographs is arbitrary and used not for any scientific purpose, but rather to make the images beautiful. At which point she asks where does the line between art and technology lie.

I wonder if such distinctions really are appropriate any longer. Certainly a degree of discursive clarity is useful, but as hard and fast delineations it seems to lose its usefulness. If the first recording of the human voice was a song, where is that line? It seems to have been blurred from the start. As a lighting designer I must constantly interface with technology. All my paperwork and drawings are done on a computer, correspondence via email and so forth. My use of the computer is so extensive that I recently turned in a lightplot via email and got reprimanded for having it late because they wanted a hard copy. I had not printed a plot, except for archival purposes, in well over a year.

The fetishization of technology runs rampant in the design world. The future of design is often looked at from the perspective of what new technologies will emerge rather than from a formal aesthetic place. And while one can and does certainly lead to the other, I fail to understand the fetishization of technology for its own sake. I am a solid advocate of new technologies, but I feel they must be predicated on serving some function. In The Design of Everyday Things Norman makes the point that the pace of new technology development can lead to poor design choices by sacrificing functionality for ‘features.’

Design is about making choices. If you are designing a telephone, you must design it for an end user who wishes to make calls, transfer calls, place people on hold, etc. And you must make those functions clear and easy to do. Designing lighting you must above all remember that theatre is a medium of story telling. It need not be easy for the audience, or literal or even based in language. But it is a story. This is where Minimalism by Design comes in handy. One can maintain a clarity of focus on the essential story. While it is not necessary to have this in order to create a powerful work, it can be quite effective.

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No really, someone ELSE wrote this

Tuesday, April 18th, 2006

Full Review here.

One cannot even begin to discuss The Themantics Group’s latest production, Cupid and Psyche, without first mentioning the glorious technical team. Michael Moore’s set is a delightful symphony of white, with a large gold frame at the back of the stage. The mortal world is confined by the frame, while the immortal world has all the space and unconstricted movement of center and downstage. Erin Elizabeth Murphy’s bright and colorful costumes offset the white netherworld of the gods, and the subtly powerful lighting design (especially the soft candle lights that hang from the ceiling, almost like stars) by Lucas Benjamin Krech really bring this mythological world to life. It is an impressive and astonishing achievement.

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