Posts Tagged ‘mtc’

Its called top chef not top cook

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

There is so much that one can take away from “Top Chef” and apply not only to lighting design but life in general. My favorite quote from the show is “At this point in the competition there is no reason you are not putting your best food on the table.” I was reminded of that quote last night talking to my programmer about an old show of mine. I was telling a story about a rather cheesy silly thing I had done once and commented that I have no shame about it. He said “There is no time for shame.”

Working in an artform with such strict deadlines like the theatre one has little to no time to second guess one’s decisions. Sure, changes can and should be made if the course of action is seen to be wrong, but more often than not one’s gut decision is the right one. Questioning decisions can be very problematic. More often, the best way of thinking is to look at a problematic situation and try and work out how to make it the best it can be. Largely this is a simple mind game, taking the pressure off “why is this wrong” and placing it towards “how can this scene/cue/transition be the best it possibly can.” Then again there are times when you just scrap everything and start over.

One of the things that has been a true delight working on Lovers and Executioners is my highly skilled lightboard programmer. He combines a depth of knowledge about the lighting console along with an alacrity in programming that makes my job incredibly easy. I do not have to think about every little programming detail, but rather can just say what I want to happen and he makes it so.

Its like the difference between a chef and a cook. Anyone can be taught to program a lightboard. It is a specialized computer and the job of the board operator is often like taking dictation. To bring light three to full intensity I say “3 at full.” There is a button for each of those [3] [at] [full]. Very simple.

But when working with moving lights it can get complicated as when the fixture can reposition while the intensity is off such that the next time it comes on it is where it wants to be rather than tracking across the stage at full intensity. The storm sequence that opens the play has a lot of lightning and wave effects, and rather than thinking meticulously about the programming and keystrokes I can simply say what I want and he makes it happen. The true benefit of all this is that I no longer have to think through all of that stuff but can free my attention to just lighting the play.

This is a wonderful freedom and one I rarely get to enjoy. Typically my knowledge of a lightboard is well beyond that of the programmer I am working with. As such I have to think through my every step in detail. Each time I have to think through HOW I am programming a cue I have less brainpower devoted to WHAT I am lighting.

Working with a programmer like the one I have here, I am able to produce a higher quality product faster than I ordinarily would. This is good for the director because she or he can see what I am going for earlier and we can get into deeper discussions about how the lighting for the play should work earlier in the tech process. This is good for me for largely the same reason, I can take that initial gut feeling and go with it full force to completion. Then I have the time to look at it, see if it works and reevaluate as needed.

We have a curious difficulty with Lovers and Executioners. All the actors are wearing large brimmed hats. This is difficult because it means to clearly light their faces, the lighting must come from head height or below in order to get underneath the hats themselves. This alone is not difficult. I have several systems of light all specifically to do this in addition to the higher angled lighting that works more environmentally. The problem resides in the fact that using these lights to light the actors faces does not feel totally right to me within the style of the piece.

But now that I have taken my initial idea as far as it can go(through balancing these different ideas of light) I must now rework it. I must change the aesthetic criteria under which I was evaluating the lighting and move on to a new and different way of thinking. More specifically a different way of seeing.

And that is the tech process. Try something, see what works and change what does not work. Every show does this, some more than others.

The very fortunate thing about this process is that I have a highly capable(and fast) programmer, so making these changes should come rather quickly.

First paid audience is tonight. I am looking forward to seeing how they react.

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Let’s get some focus in that focus

Thursday, November 8th, 2007

One of the most important aspects to lighting design is the focus of the lights. This is where the designer, with the help of a team of electricians, point the lights where they are needed to go. Prior to the designer’s arrival, the electricians have taken the lightplot(drawn by the designer) and hung the lights where specified, assigned proper control channels etc.

At focus the designer takes a total mess of lighting equipment and sorts it into useable order. A big splotchy sequence of control channels gets organized into an elegant system of sidelight, and so on. I have seen poorly focused systems of light be tweaked just slightly and the effect can be an almost 50% increase in brightness, not to mention allowing for more proper control. All of this is to facilitate putting light where it needs to go and taking it away from where it shouldn’t be.

The lighting designer can not begin to compose the looks for the show until the focus is complete, just as the painter can not begin work until the canvass is stretched and the palette is organized. Focus requires deep concentration. As each light is focused it must be kept in relation to all the other lights in the plot to make sure they all work together the way they are intended. Further, the designer often makes changes based upon the evolution of things in the rehearsal hall or new ideas that have come up since the plot was drafted.

In order that this concentration be maintained, a rhythm must be established. Often the designer will be focusing a light with one electrician while others are getting into place to focus the next set of lights. This keeps the designer moving from place to place without a break. This is good. As a rule of thumb a designer should average about two minutes per light. I tend to work at about a minute and a half a light when the rhythm really gets established and things get going.

Focus is an interesting part of the lighting design process. It requires that the designer and the person running focus(either an assistant or the master electrician) have a good sense of detail work and specificity AND an overview of the whole situation. For the designer this means keeping the specific light being worked on in relation to all the other lights and how they will work over the course of the entire show. For the person calling focus it means keeping the designer and electricians moving around the space such that everything gets done in an efficient manner.

We are nearly done with the focus for Lovers and Executioners. A few special lights and scenery accents that need to be completed but the bulk of the work is done. The set appears to be taking light very well and it will be nice to start writing light cues. I am very excited to see how the costumes react under the light. I think they will look quite lovely. It is always a pleasure for me to see these elements come together. The things we talk about together in meetings but work on separately all come together into one greater whole.

I think this show will be a lot of fun.

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Style is always in Fashion

Tuesday, November 6th, 2007

Style is always an interesting aspect of creating a play. I mean there are “Style Plays” where the content is the style. There are plays set firmly in a certain genre, where the style of the piece is integral to the story telling. And then there is the more ambiguous aspects of style where it is an aid to storytelling but rather than being integral or inherent is more a matter of illuminating certain aspects of the piece that may not be so readily apparent.

Lovers and Executioners is interesting in terms of style. The play itself does not fall evenly into preconceived notions of genre. Originally written contemporaneously to Mollier it has some structural elements that resonate strongly with that kind of theatre. The use of rhyming couplets for example. The plot however, feels a lot more like a Shakespeare play. Take into account that we are using a modern translation and it becomes a contemporary reworking of a classical story.

So already there is a lot going on there in terms of style just in the language. This is true emotionally as well. The play really runs the gamut from nearly operatic melodrama to hard emotional realism. It is playful and cruel. Soft and hard. In the end quite an emotional roller coaster.

Josh and I, and the rest of the design team, have been working to create a visual world that allows the audience access to all these components. The set is a series of painted flats made to look like dimensional scenery. It is a very classic style with a fairly modern sensibility. Depending upon the staging it allows for very real moments to be played as well as some truly high comic and melodramatic moments as well.

In working through the lighting for this piece it was necessary to find the right balance of realism and theatricality. Even in the most real moments on stage it is necessary to be very clear that we remain in the world of a play. We are never trying to hide that fact.

Further, we wanted the lighting to have a semblance of the classical just as the scenery does. To that end we have components that are very modern and fit right in with the currents of contemporary theatrical lighting design. We also have components harkening back to the classical time the play was written, like footlights. Further, with all the fights and other choreographed movement I was interested in injecting the piece with a dance flavor so much of the lighting has been thought through from a dance perspective and worked into the light plot in that way.

A big concern with this play was that because the visual style is so important to what we are doing with the piece it is as necessary to light the scenery and clothes as it is the actors faces. A balance had to be struck that would at once afford us clear visibility of the actors but also show off the clothes against the set. And the set against the action. This may seem obvious, but finding what this balance is can often be a bit of a trick.

We go in for focus tonight and it will be nice to see all these pieces come together. I am really looking forward to lighting this play over the next several days. It is such a wonderful and delightful visual world to inhabit it should be a lot of fun. Plus being reunited with Josh who I have not worked with since 2001 has been a lot of fun.

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Regionalisms

Tuesday, July 24th, 2007

The summer has been crazy with all the travel. I got back from California Monday morning and went, more or less, right into tech. Today we load-in for the dance piece I am working on at Joyce Soho with choreographer Trebien Pollard. I am very excited about this project, I think it will be a lot of fun. I have lit around ten or so of his dances but never a full evening piece, so this should be interesting. And then on Sunday I fly to Edinburgh.

Quite a time!

I just got off the phone with a company in Virginia and it looks like I will be lighting two plays in repertory there this September. It is an interesting pairing, Dracula and Driving Miss Daisy. This promises to be a curious few weeks of tech. At least they tech sequentially so I do not have to bounce my brain back and forth from one to the next.

I really enjoy working in differing locations. Spending time in a new or just different city or town really helps with theatre work. Theatre, and by that I include dance and opera, is at its core about human beings and human relationships. The more different types of people one knows and interacts with the greater depth and breadth of experience there is to draw from when working on a show.

So far this year I have worked in four states and one foreign country. By the end of the year I will be adding at least one of each to that list. Not to say that the quality of the experience is based upon its frequency or volume, because it is not, but something for me really gets animated being in new and different places. Returning to familiar locations, like Berkeley, is wonderful as well and provides its own satisfactions.

Working in the theatre is, in many ways, like a perpetual homecoming. Friends and coworkers recombine and move about and are encountered in varying situations. The lead tenor in Aida sang the role of the Mother in The Seven Deadly Sins. The safety coordinator at Glimmerglass was the TD when I worked at Virginia Opera. Different show, different city, same people.

This fall is shaping up nicely with shows in Virginia, California and New York. It will be nice to get a good dose of American regionalisms after spending three weeks in Europe and the UK.

But in the meantime, come see my play, opera, or dance.

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Thursday work-a-day

Thursday, June 21st, 2007

It has been a busy day. I have been catching up on my preparatory paperwork for Aida. I have also begun some preliminary work on Lovers and Executioners, a play I will be lighting next November in California. Its a little early yet to begin any real work on that play, but I do like to get some of the initial organizational stuff out of the way early so I can focus more on the artistic aspects of the piece later on.

I have worked on so many new scripts recently that it will be nice to work on something published, whose scene structure is known and will not be shifting around much during rehearsals. It can be difficult working on new scripts because quite often one does not know until the piece is up what you have in your hands. It takes a lot of guesswork.

At the same time the trouble with well known works is the trap of falling into a rote response. The trick in both instances then is to come in with a strong idea about the work, but then to remain open and flexible to what the piece can be. It is quite impossible to know before you have actors on stage, in costume and under lights what anything will look like. Or to be more specific, if any of it will work.

Changes to the placement and focus of lighting instruments can at times be interpreted as a lack of preparation on the part of the designer, when in fact the issue is much more subtle than that. Theatre exists in time. And as a temporal artfom one cannot know if a particular gesture is the right one until one sees it in the context of the piece in motion.

This is one of the reasons I do not like technical rehearsals that do a “Cue to Cue.” For the non-Theatre people a Cue to Cue is a horrid situation wherein everyone sits around static and the lighting and sound designers build cues, then, once the cues are written everyone moves on to the next scene or Cue and it is all done again. It is boring for everyone involved. The actors lose a day or two of rehearsal, and the designers work in a static environment that bears no relationship to the actual work.

Far better than the Cue to Cue is to light the show over rehearsal. In this situation the actors and director and whoever else(choreographer etc.) rehearse the play and the lighting designer writes light cues independent of them. The benefit of this is seeing the light in motion as well as the people in motion under the lighting. The cueing and timing is stronger because the light is built with the time sense of the play in mind.

I spent a little time this afternoon cleaning up my lighting design portfolio. A few things were out of date like the upcoming shows as well my resume. I am glad to have taken care of all that. Overall it has been quite a productive day.

In a bit of funny news I saw the UC Berkeley Theatre Department Alumni newsletter today. It has a section where alums can put in a short blurb about what they are doing. I had sent mine in months ago and decided to take a look at it. It turns out that there was more there than I had put in the blurb. So my hunch is that someone involved there reads this blog. I wonder who it is. I am so used to bios and things having to be cut, that it never crossed my mind one would be extended like that. How funny!

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