Here are some pictures from the Nutcracker for Kids I lit this year for New York Theatre Ballet.
Choreography by Keith Michael
Costumes by Sylvia Taalsohn-Nolan
Scenery by Gillian Bradshaw-Smith
All photographs courtesy Richard Termine
Posts Tagged ‘nutcracker’
Nutcracker Pictures
Thursday, December 21st, 2006Shows, shows, shows
Wednesday, December 20th, 2006I had a meeting with Eduardo Machado this afternoon to talk about a show we are doing in February. Artfuckers looks to be a lot of fun to work on. I have not worked with Eduardo as a director before, only as a producer when I lit Windows. I guess he liked my work enough to want to bring me on board one of his own projects. He sure is a fun person to work with.
His sense of directorial dramaturgy is wonderful. He talked about a few things he is doing with the play that do not impact the writing in the slightest and yet strengthen one key potential weakness in the text. I love the way that a director can augment a text and strengthen it without actually altering the text itself. Especially with new works this is important. To take the text as close to face value as possible. If there are serious problems in the translation from the page to the stage, a director can serve as a valuable editor in that regard and I think their input can be very useful. At the same time there is a degree of integrity of the text-as-written that should and must be maintained.
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Becoming Adele opens tonight. We have been having silly electrical problems on top of the issues at the light hang. But I am sure the Master Electrician will have it all sorted out for tonight.
I am quite pleased with my work on this show, all problems aside. The audience responses during previews have been very favorable and the houses have been quite full, so I have a good feeling about this one. Of course we shall find out what the critics think tomorrow. Its such a strange waiting game.
I have Nutcracker pictures to go through that may get posted before I head out to see the play tonight. If not, you all will have to wait until tomorrow.
Three is a magic number
Saturday, December 16th, 2006Nutcracker, Becoming Adele, and Waiting for Godot all perform today. Three shows in Manhattan. That kind of trips me out.
Next year is beginning to shape up nicely. It has been so chaotic with dates moving and rights and funding disappearing then reappearing that I am only now getting a handle on what things look like. At the end of January I will begin working on a commercial Off-Broadway play Last Word written by Oren Safdie and directed by Alex Lippard. Alex and I met at the theatre a few days ago along with the producer, GM and set designer to do a bit of a site survey. As that gears up to go into previews I will remounting Mother GOOSE!.
February has the official opening of Last Word. Then a small play called Operation Ajax produced by The Butane Group. This is a great piece of political theater addressing the issues surrounding the CIA’s overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iran in favor of the Shah, all of course leading to the Iranian revolution and an Islamic Fundamentalist state.
This will be followed by Artfuckers at Theatre for a New City, directed, but not written, by Eduardo Machado. The play was written by Michael Domitrovich. It centers around the New York art and fashion scene. The play, given the characters, could easily fall into the “poor little rich kid” trap, but rather brilliantly does not. It looks to be a lot of fun. It is rather complex design-wise for all involved and should prove an interesting challenge. The costume designer is my friend Oana Botez-Ban who I have worked with a number of times before. I always have fun working on shows with her. Her costumes are so fun to light!
March looks to be dance month as I have three different dance shows penciled in for the month. There are still a number of things up in the air so of course some of this is subject to change, but it looks to be a nice winter by all counts.
It looks so simple the sky, just water and a single light source
Thursday, December 14th, 2006I know things have been a bit quiet over here, but I have been quite busy. Monday was load-in for Becoming Adele. Focus was Tuesday evening and then this morning we finished up a few odds and ends. We have an invited dress tomorrow night and then our first preview is Friday. The show is in good shape, which is nice since our first press has to come a lot earlier than we would have liked. But things seem to be progressing nicely.
Today the sound designer for Adele mentioned that this will be her 30th show this year. I reacted with a bit of shock until I realized that it will be my 24th. I guess the round number threw me. Still, 30 is a lot of plays to do in one year.
The set for Adele is backed with a big lovely blue sky. I am having a lot of fun manipulating clouds on the sky as we progress through various times of day. I have quite a few lights to deal with the various cloud scenarios, but it does not seem like enough. The more I do on the sky, the more it becomes clear just how layered a simple cloud is. The sky is so complex, I feel I could explore it for years and never get bored.
I had a meeting during my dinner break with the producer, director, GM and set designer for a small Off-Broadway play I will be lighting near the end of January. The play is called Last Word and will be directed by Alex Lippard who I have worked with before on Sake with the Haiku Geisha and Cupid and Psyche
This Friday is a bit wacky. The plot for Nutcracker got changed around this week, so I have to go in and restore our plot before the weekend shows. All this of course before a rehearsal for Adele.
And of course being the insane person that I am, I lit a conceptual Godot. I never actually saw a full run through. In fact I only saw part of act 1. But with that play that’s like seeing part of both acts. I will actually not have a chance to see it. We lit it without actors. A rather surreal experience, but somehow appropriate for that play.
I am eating the most awesome pumpkin pie right now that my girlfriend made right before she went out of town for a few days. The texture is just right and it has a lovely ginger kick to it that I really enjoy.
Please people, can we follow a few simple rules.
Sunday, December 10th, 2006It amazes me that somehow people do not understand the words “no flash photography for the safety of the dancers” means that when you take a snapshot of a performer in mid-pirouette you risk killing or severely injuring that cute snowflake or ice princess when they lose their balance and fall off the stage. Aside from the fact that you are illegally recording other people’s copyrighted artistic work and ruining the show for the OTHER 441 people in the house, it is just plain dangerous to the performers.
An interesting opportunity came and went last week. I was approached to light a film version of a musical being shot in LA. The previous lighting designer had to back out at the last minute and I was asked. The shoot begins next week and I have an Off-Broadway play teching that same time so I had to turn it down.
It is interesting timing because I have been thinking of exploring film work recently. Lia has convinced me that I need to watch Six Feet Under and I must say I am quite impressed with the show. I have not watched television in years, save the occasional Simpsons episode or what have you. The medium does not interest me so much. But Six Feet Under is actually quite good and has caught my attention. It is also some of the most sublime cinematography I have ever seen. There is some really beautiful work on that show.
I have further been thinking of my time doing photography. I spent many an afternoon in the college in darkrooms developing negatives or walking about shooting film. Yes I did it analog! The photography trailed off somewhere my first year of graduate school as my focus became more about lighting design. I started doing some digital photography, but of a very different kind.
At NYU we would do rather involved projects like this where we would take a scenic model for a play and light it taking digital pictures of every light cue in the show. Hundreds of hours were spent in the lightlab getting all the various shots for each and every scene. Of course these projects were not something simple like Ibsen, but Shakespeare or Musical projects with many many lighting cues.
Thinking over this has led me to consider working in film. I love the medium of film and find the opportunities to capture light that it provides can be quite wonderful. I may well be oversimplifying and romanticizing the situation, but it appears as if film and television is in many ways a synthesis of the various skill sets is have surrounding my specialty of lighting.
I would not want to give up live performance as I find the relationship with a real audience to be something truly wonderful. But I think it could add an interesting element to the dialog in my work to expand into these other and different mediums. Just as my dance work intersects in interesting ways with my theatre with my opera work, I wonder how that would all be effected with the introduction of film and television.
Nutcracker Opens Today
Friday, December 1st, 2006The Nutcracker opens tomorrow, Saturday morning. It’s a fantastic kids show and if you have the little ones I would highly recommend it. Matthew Broderick and SJP bring their little one to see it, and so should you.
Ticket information available here.
Engine engine number nine, on the New York Transit line
Tuesday, November 28th, 2006I think my favorite thing about traveling by train rather than airplane is that there are power outlets so I can actually get work done during the travel time rather than hoping my computer does not run out of batteries before I am finished. I am on my way to Albany heading to Williamstown for a production meeting tomorrow. I have no idea of course when I will have an internet connection to allow me to post this or the several emails I have to take care of. Perhaps it’s better that way as I will get a bit of a break from all that connectivity for a while.
My friend Bob is in town from San Francisco and we got to hang out a bit and chat this morning before I headed off to Nutcracker rehearsal.
Nutcracker rehearsal went well. The show is as I remember it from when I last lit this production two years ago. Most of the company is new to me. The few dancers I still do know are playing different roles, it makes the whole thing like new. I will be missing one of the performance days, so a friend of mine, Ben Swope, will be filling in to call the show those days. For Nutcracker I am the stage manager as well as the Lighting Designer. This is rather common in dance and works around the rest of my schedule. It would not be practically possible in theatre, nor would it really be desirable.
After the Ballet rehearsal I went to the first reading of Becoming Adele. It should be a very nice show. Afterwards one of the producers mentioned he has his Google Alerts set up with anything related to Adele or Gotham Stages. And reads this blog from time to time. Hi Mike!
The two versions of the set are still a question to be determined. I think either solution works at an artistic level, despite how different they are for me lighting the show. The issue under consideration is whether there will be walls with a small patch of sky or no walls and a large 50+ foot sky. With the first I would want to keep light off the walls, thus containing the space more, while with the latter I would want to utilize the sky as a means of visually contextualizing the dramatic action. They necessitate very different approaches to the lighting as one might expect. Changing how the environment is lit changes not just that but also how we light the performer. The presence of the actor changes in very real and significant ways when the environment they are in changes. Having the sky means simplifying how we light the actor.
The lucky thing is that the play as performer on stage is rather straight forward. It does not need a lot of lighting, especially when there is an environment like the large blue sky. I did a bit of research last night looking through my sky book. Seriously, this is an indispensable tool for a lighting designer. Richard Misrach does all kinds of wonderful landscape photography, I would love to have more of his books in my collection. But nothing, truly nothing, beats this as far as a research tool for a lighting designer.
The play is written in three acts. Each act is set at a specific time of day that at once enhances and plays against the dramatic action. Playwrights are often the best lighting designers. I find very often if I just listen to the musicality of the language it will tell me everything I need to know. So, Adele. Three acts. Different time of day and day of the year with each one. What I am interested in doing is taking the rather simple blue painted sky and transforming it through the lighting. Colors and clouds morphing across the sky as we go with Adele on her journey of self discovery.
So much of the play gets its strength from the location it is set in. A roof top in Manhattan. That setting, the where and the when, is as much the story as the words and movement on stage. The strength of the latter comes in large part from the specificity of the former. This play would not work if it was abstracted too far. If it were conceptualized it would begin to fall apart. What is moving about the play are those things that are most real, most tangible about it.
The people on this project are great. Producers and creative team. The producers are very nice and pleasant people to work with, even when I am always asking for more money. They really believe in the work and that is quite an important trait. And I am not saying this to suck up even though I know you read this space, so stop thinking that! The director, Victor Maog, I have worked with before this past summer and he is a lot of fun. A very pleasant jovial person and very good director. It is quite a skill to keep such an open and playful environment and still get down to business and do the real work that needs to be done. A nice surprise today was finding out that the sound designer was Betsy Rhodes who I worked with this past summer as well. She is fantastic. Another of those fun and pleasant types who still get the work done.
Having a sense of humor about the work is so important. They are called plays after all. It is too bad that so often a sense of fun and enjoyment is somehow considered to be antithetical to a seriousness of purpose. In my experience that is anything but true. In fact I have often found that those who can take a lighter approach to the whole thing are just as effective as anyone else, but they also have more fun doing it. For me this is true and from that follows that when I am having fun I do better work.
Some of that is why I have changed the tone of this journal. I was unpleased with he writing style. Ultimately I was not having fun writing any more. No sense spending half an hour to an hour each day writing if its no fun. The whole rap lyrics as subject headings is starting to get boring. Fortunately November is almost over and my odd self imposed goal will be completed.
Doin’ your job, every day, and then you work so hard till your hair turns grey
Monday, November 27th, 2006I thought I was going to have today off.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
I had half a morning off. Count your blessings I suppose. Finished up the opera plot and sent that out. That’s a big project. I had gotten distracted a few days ago and thought I was further along than I was. Oh well. I had until the end of the week to send it off. Four days early is not too bad. I would have liked to take the day off, but having the work done is better. Now at least it is not hanging over my head as I redesign Becoming Adele.
Yesterday I got an email from the set designer that she was reconceiving the design. It’s one of those things that is actually a rather small scenic change but radically alters the lighting. I now have essentially three times as much area that needs to be lit with the same rental budget. Time to get creative. Of course the change is not final, so I am actually in a bit of a holding pattern with this one.
The color and template order went out today for Nutcracker. So that is as done as can be until we load in to the theatre on Friday. Tomorrow is a bit crazy. I have a Nutcracker rehearsal followed by a read thru of Adele. Then I hop on a train to Williamstown for a production meeting on Wednesday. Yikes!
Well, I should probably make myself dinner before I get back to work.
. . .
To the local bodega to wolf down a hero, son is on a midnight run like Deniro
Friday, November 24th, 2006A problem that had eluded me on the opera plot solved itself almost as soon as I opened the file this morning. It’s nice when that happens. I often find it better to “sleep on” a problem rather than torturing myself over it. This is why I find it useful to work on multiple projects at the same time. As soon as one hits a snag I can switch to another, either dealing with a different iteration of the same problem or something else entirely. Usually this causes the original problem to get solved. The answer is almost always there, you just have to relax into it at times. Wait patiently and it will come out of hiding.
Last night at Thanksgiving dinner there were various cries of “Wow three days off work!” or “Oh darn I have to go to work tomorrow, but at least I can come in late.” And then there was me, “I’ve got to get to work as soon as we get home.” I must say I am very glad I do not have a ‘boss’ who makes me show up in a regimented schedule. Sure during technical rehearsals I need to be at the theatre at certain prescribed times, but so much of the work is done on my own time and in my own schedule it is great. Even if this means working late on a day others consider a holiday.
It’s time to get back to the dance plot once this little break is over. It should be simple enough. I have all the basic ideas worked out. I just need to put them on the rep-plot and be done with it. There are so many variations on the concept of the repertory light plot and each one demands its own approach.
The basic idea behind the repertory light plot is that there is a set basic position and color for the lights in a theatre. Depending upon the venue you can make various changes to some or all of the lights. For Nutcracker I use almost the whole rep plot as drawn and only make a few minor changes to the position of the lights, but then I refocus them all to make them specific to the show and of course the color is all our own. For the dance piece in Williamstown I am making a few color changes and then the plot has a series of dedicated “specials” that can be refocused for each piece. Everything else remains in it’s “rep focus” and color. Theater festival plots vary from a total fixed focus to allowing you to do anything with the light so long as it remains hung in the same location.
There is a specific craft that goes into utilizing repertory plots. The SF Opera has a kind of hybrid system. There is a very extensive rep plot but any light can be focused however the designer wishes, with a few exceptions. On top of that a large number of lights can be added for more specific needs. It was a great experience in my two seasons there as the lighting assistant watching how different designers negotiated that system.
The bid for Becoming Adele should be going out on Monday. The show looks to be simple enough. It’s a lovely little play. A good heartwarming tale for the ‘Holiday Season.’
I have not mentioned here Operation Ajax that I am lighting for The Butane Group. This is a great piece of political theatre dealing with the US backed coup in Iran in 1953. The Eisenhower Administration, that wonderful group of people who systematically overthrew numerous Democratically elected governments in favor of repressive authoritarian regimes. You know, the guys who set in motion a series of events that led to radical hostility and animosity towards the United States from the Middle East, South America and more. Wonderful people.
I have not worked with The Butane Group before, although I was approached to light a show of theirs several years ago, I had a conflict. I seem to remember I was working in San Francisco at the time. Anyhow, they do some interesting work. I saw a workshop of a piece in progress a few months ago that I really enjoyed. If you want to get a sense of their work they have an audio piece available here.
I guess February is the month of political theatre as I am also working on a production of Mad Forest. And November, the month of only using rap lyrics in my subject headings, is nearly over.
