Its a curious thing lighting a work you have already designed a year earlier. We load in Cinderella and the repertory program this Thursday and have shows this weekend and next weekend. Its curious because on the one hand the work is done. I have done this before and rebuilding it should be no real trouble at all. On the other hand, every time you encounter a piece it is different. Sometimes its a different cast, sometimes you just have different eyes. Any way you slice it, the work is different.
The lightplot is very similar, but I did make a few adjustments to it that will help the new pieces in the repertory program this time around. Small changes. The kind of this only a lighting designer would notice. But very important.
Repertory lightplots are such strange beasts. They are a delicate balance of specificity and generality. In the case of New York Theatre Ballet each program is distinct enough that there is a different plot for each show. The Cinderella plays not just by itself but with a rotating repertory program that varies year to year. Thus the plot must be able to work for Cinderella but so too must it work for the changing repertory program that goes along with it.
Depending upon the piece, be it a dance, a play or an opera, no less then half the lighting needs to be general enough that the plot can accommodate changes. Perhaps the staging changes at the last minute, or the scenery or costume colors are totally different than you were led to believe, or the writer adds a scene in a new location in the middle of the piece. Any of these scenarios can, will and have happened. The lightplot needs to be flexible enough to react to these and more extreme scenarios. At the same time it must give the particular work in question the specificity and care that it deserves.
It is a balancing act. Difficult and at times nearly impossible, but so goes the job, here is an impossible situation, make it beautiful. Cinderella is far from impossible. It is, to be quite honest a fairly straight forward situation. Some of the documentation is incomplete and most of the repertory pieces are new to me so there is a lot of creation that must go into it. Not so simple as plugging a disk into a computer and cleaning up a few light cues, but certainly not difficult.
It looks to be a nice program, with an interestingly eclectic group of dances. This should be a very pleasant couple of weeks.
