Today was focus for Windows. We ran into a little snag that turned a half hour affair into a two hour ordeal. I had been emailing back and forth with the Master Electrician, and somewhere along the way the final and the preliminary paperwork got confused, and the prelims were sent out to print. This meant that nearly a third of the lights were not where I had drafted them. Fortunately the theatre we are in is VERY small so we only have about 50 or so lights to deal with. But still it is a pain in arse.
We got through focus though. The plot is sitting there ready to go. I have of course already seen a few changes based upon the rehearsal I attended after focus, but they are easy enough to take care of in a quick notes session before our ten out of twelve.
Note: (Since I know there are several non-theatre people who read this.) A Ten out of Twelve refers to a big tech day. The actors union allows two twelve hour days for technical rehearsals each having two one hour meal breaks. All subsequent rehearsals are much shorter, often no more than five hours, if not just long enough to do a run through. Depending upon the show and the specific contract there might be one or two ten out of twelves typically for a production.
So the plot is focused. For all intents and purposes. The set is tricky. But before I go there, a little explanation of the play. This is a new play in development written and directed by Sylvia Bofill. The play follows three generations of Puerto Rican women living in New York City. The mother(and father) had moved there due to the husbands illness. Later the daughter and grandmother followed. There are some very beautiful moments in the play as it deals with three generations of women and their relationships and conflicts. Questions of culture, identity and loss play a major role in the storytelling.
So the set. I am having a somewhat difficult time processing it. Not so much at a formal, where do the light go level, that part is rather simple. But more at the level of the visual storytelling of the play. I see New York. Very clearly, it is there. A kind of sleek artifice and plastic veneer. Geometric lines and shapes. But what I do not see is Puerto Rico. The set makes a very strong comment upon the play by firmly rooting it outside of Puerto Rico, despite numerous references and flashback sequences that take place there.
Now, some of this issue will be addressed through the costuming. I am sure the costume designer is not buying the clothes at Kress. Nonetheless it looks like there will be a less one sided point of view from that aspect of the design.
This places the lighting in an interesting position. In order to light the set, and thus the play, the lighting must utilize the sleek and angular qualities inherent in the design. To fight it(too much) would simply be discordant, with no dramatic value. Most of the action takes place in “Gringolandia” anyhow and it is important for the story that a degree of personal history be erased. Yet, too much in that direction would threaten a lot of the fragile beauty of the text.
It is an interesting question for me. How much can the lighting do to affect the point of view in a piece when there is already such a strong visual statement in place? Is there a way to unsettle or decenter the prominence of that visual statement from within its own logic? For a variety of reasons, I feel that color will be a useful tool in the shaping of that visual language of resistance. Because in a way, the play is about that. It is about the individual’s struggle against the totalizing forces of culture and politics and family.
I hope I do not sound disparaging of the set. I am not. I think it poses and interesting challenge. It presents the challenge not only to me as another designer, but to the play as a whole. Is it possible to resist that? Can the individual escape the force of being thrown in the world under certain given circumstances? Does such a thing as the autonomous self exist? If so is it something apart from culture or does it embrace that culture? How does that negotiation resolve itself? And of course, why are families so infuriating?
We have quite a long tech process. Nearly two weeks in the theatre. So there is a lot of time to explore these questions and try and discover a visual language that will best tell the story.
