Posts Tagged ‘tools of the trade’

From the Archives: Is Stanley McCandless German? OR The Rediscovery of Shadow in Contemporary Culture

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

Note: This post originally appeared in July of 2006. It has been slightly edited to account for grammatical errors.

Theoretically the whole acting area might be lighted with one powerful instrument directing its beams to the stage from a distance, at an angle which would light up the face of the actor somewhat as the rays from the sun make objects visible on a sunny day.
–Stanley McCandless, A method for Lighting the Stage

During his time a single light that could cover an entire stage was nothing but theory yet now such technology is commonplace. The film industry has found a need to brightly illuminate large areas in a color identical to daylight such that the camera does not pick up the difference between the sun and the artificial lighting in the photography. Because of that need the HMI Fresnel was born. HMI is a kind of lamp that operates much like a fluorescent or neon in that there is a glass container with chemicals in it that gets flooded with electricity and lets off (very bright) light. Although originally designed for film these lights have found their way into theaters initially through European opera houses.

The difference between an HMI and a traditional incandescent lamp is like comparing watercolor to oil paint. One can achieve the same range of colors, perhaps, but the actual quality of the medium is quite different. By using these large lighting instruments one can achieve effects that are quite simply impossible with ‘area lighting.’ One of the biggest issues is shadows. Often in American theater productions one sees a stage floor covered with lots and lots of tiny shadows. These are the result of lots and lots of tiny little lights focused into lots and lots of little areas. This is common in so called ‘naturalism’ and yet it is about as unnatural as one can get. When we walk out into the sun at 4:30 in the afternoon we see a single shadow cast from a single source of light. Perhaps two shadows if we are near a building with a reflective glass wall. But nowhere, unless we are in an artificial environment, do we have twenty-three or more shadows one sees on a typical American stage floor.

I am not arguing for an aesthetic that knows only deep shadow. If everything were like that, it would get as boring as unchanging shadowless light. A deeper appreciation for shadow could greatly enhance the beauty and dynamism of the American stage. In some ways this is a political stance. I never watch TV unless I am on an airplane, but when I have the chance one of my favorite things to watch is Fox News. Their lighting designer must be one of the most brilliant propagandists alive. Watch one of their cable news shows some time it is fascinating. All the anchors are lit so evenly that there is not a single shadow to be found. They represent the ‘truth.’ They are ‘fair and balanced.’ Then they have their Conservative guests on camera who have slight shadows. Nothing big, but just enough to differentiate them from the hosts. Finally you have anyone other than a conservative wingnut. They always, ALWAYS, have a shadow underneath their chin. Minor issue right? Who cares? Indeed. No one cared in 1962 when Nixon and Kennedy debated on television. Appearance in front of a camera means nothing. Nothing at all.

Shadows indicate secrets. Subconsciously we know this somewhere. It is an accepted part of our culture. Shadow = untruth. Or at least half truth. We can not believe the shadowed figure as much as our fair and balanced hosts. They have nothing to hide, so we must trust them. I do not believe this was always the case. For shadow means something else entirely. It means Mystery. Sometimes a divine mystery one is rightly in awe of. One need only look at the paintings of Rembrandt or Caravaggio or El Greco to see a strong Western tradition that appreciates the beauty of the shadow.

It is time to reclaim the beauty of shadows. Like Tanizaki did for Japanese culture with In Praise of Shadows, we must relearn the beauty and truth of shadow. They need not be things to fear so long as we know how to approach them. Batman after all, one of the greatest dark heros of modern mythology, hides in the shadows. We are afraid, as a culture, to look inside ourselves and stare at the void. We are much more content to turn on the television and be told about our fair and balanced world. But it is time for our art to show us that void. If we can not go there unaided, then our art, our cultural subconscious, must be brought to the surface of our attention. We must learn to stare out at the dark expanse of human consciousness and see possibility and potential. We must learn to live in praise of shadows.

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Posted in design, theory | No Comments »

Is Stanley McCandless German? OR The Rediscovery of Shadow in Contemporary Culture

Friday, July 14th, 2006

Theoretically the whole acting area might be lighted with one powerful instrument directing its beams to the stage from a distance, at an angle which would light up the face of the actor somewhat as the rays from the sun make objects visible on a sunny day.
–Stanley McCandless, A method for Lighting the Stage

During his time a single light that could cover an entire stage was nothing but theory, but now such technology is commonplace. The film industry has found a need to brightly illuminate large areas in a color identical to daylight, such that the camera does not pick up the difference between the sun and the artificial lighting in the photography. Because of that need, the HMI Fresnel was born. HMI is a kind of lamp that operates much like a fluorescent or neon in that there is a glass container with chemicals in it that gets flooded with electricity and lets off (very bright) light. Although originally designed for film, these lights have found their way into theaters, primarily through European opera houses and increasingly in the US as well.

The difference between an HMI and a traditional incandescent lamp is like comparing watercolor to oil paint. One can achieve the same range of colors, perhaps, but the actual quality of the medium is quite different. By using these large lighting instruments one can achieve effects that are quite simply impossible with ‘area lighting.’ One of the biggest issue is shadows. Often in American theatre productions one sees a stage floor covered in lots and lots of tiny shadows. These are the result of lots and lots of tiny little lights focused into lots of little areas. This is very common in so called ‘naturalism’ and yet it is about as unnatural as one can get. When we walk out into the sun at 4:30 in the afternoon, we see a single shadow cast from a single source of light. Perhaps two if we are near a building with a reflective glass wall. But nowhere, unless we are in an artificial environment, do we have the twenty-three shadows one sees on a typical American stage floor.

Now, I am not arguing for an aesthetic that knows only shadows. If everything were like that, it would get as boring as anything else. But, a deeper appreciation for shadow could greatly enhance the beauty and dynamism of the American stage. In some ways this is a political stance. I never watch TV unless I am on an airplane, but when I have the chance my favorite thing to watch is Fox News(or Faux News, in the patriotic dialect). Their lighting designer must be one of the most brilliant propagandists alive. Watch one of their cable news shows some time, it is fascinating. All the anchors are lit so evenly that there is not a single shadow to be found. After all they represent the ‘truth’ they are ‘fair and balanced.’ So then they have their Conservative guests on camera who have slight shadows. Nothing big, but just enough to differentiate them from the hosts. Finally you have anyone other than a conservative wingnut. They always, ALWAYS, have a shadow underneath their chin. Minor issue right? Who cares? Indeed. No one cared in 1962 when Nixon and Kennedy debated on television. Appearance in front of a camera means nothing. Nothing at all.

Shadows mean secrets. Subconsciously we know this somewhere. It is an accepted part of our culture. Shadow = untruth. Or at least half truth. We can not believe the shadowed figure as much as our fair and balanced hosts. They have nothing to hide, so we must trust them. I do not believe this was always the case. For shadow means something else entirely. It means Mystery. One need only look at the paintings of Rembrandt or Caravaggio or El Greco to see a strong Western tradition that appreciates the beauty of the shadow.

It is time to reclaim the beauty of shadows. Like Tanizaki did for Japanese culture with In Praise of Shadows, we must relearn the beauty and truth of shadows. They need not be things to fear, so long as we know how to approach them. Batman after all, one of the greatest dark hero’s of modern mythology, hides in the shadows. We are afraid, as a culture to look inside ourselves and stare at the void. We are much more content to turn on the television and be told about our fair and balanced world. But it is time for our art to show us that void. If we can not go there unaided, then our art, our cultural subconscious, must be brought to the surface of our attention. We must learn to stare out at the dark expanse of human consciousness and see possibility and potential. We must learn to live in praise of shadows.

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Posted in design, theatre, theory | 6 Comments »

Methodical Thinking

Thursday, July 13th, 2006

A method for Lighting the Stage by Stanley McCandless was first printed in 1932. My personal copy is a 1984 reprint of the 1963 correction to the Fourth Edition that was first printed in 1958. I mention this only because this book was, and by many people still is considered a primary text for lighting design. Rather than being “a” method during all those years, it was considered by many to be “the” method.

The specifics of the book are uninteresting to anyone but a specialist, so I will glaze over them for the moment. The basic idea is this. Light, in any setting is motivated by some source, i.e. a lamp, the sun, a fire, etc. Thus, any object that is hit by that source has essentially two sides, a light side and a shadow side. McCandless then divided up the stage space into a grid of acting ‘areas’ and into each area would focus two lights, each coming from the front on a 45 degree angle. One would be warm, perhaps a pale amber, and one would be cool, a blue. Which was which depended upon where the lamp or window or whatever was placed. This is a very efficient means of lighting a stage space. You cover the entire stage and you can control the relative brightness or dimness of different locations on stage. If you have six areas, you need twelve lights. Clean, simple, done.

Much of what was going on in McCandless’ thinking had to do with problem solving for a much less advanced technology than we now have available. Power and control were two of his main concerns. In those days there simply was not enough electricity to power more than a few dozen lights. And controlling them was an insane job taking several electricians operating large panels of levers. Then and now is like comparing a mid-century computer and the latest laptop. One is large, bulky and slow, the other small, fast and efficient. For his time it was an amazing and progressive way of dealing with a very real situation. And this is a situation many people still find themselves in in the ‘indie-theatre’ world, where power and control are the first concern and art the second. The Method is a great way to turn minimalism by circumstance into minimalism by design.

The real tragedy of McCandless’ legacy is that too often his writing is taken literally, that one must light a show from the box booms with amber from one side and blue from another. If you want an old fashioned look, then this is certainly the source to begin with, but I would hope that our aesthetic sensibilities have evolved past the 1930′s. What I find interesting about going back to texts like this is to try and extract the essence of the idea, the motivation behind the specifics and then attempt to apply it to a contemporary setting. This is what I was getting at yesterday,

Both McCandless and Carson’s work is concerned with a kind of economy of volume. That is how to fill a stage both efficiently and beautifully. While the final product could not be more different, in many ways they stem from the same origin.

While we were working on Norma at the San Francisco Opera, Heather turned to me and said with a wry smile, “See, that’s how you light an opera for less than $12,000.” Both of these designers are interested in an economy of volume. They want to fill the space elegantly and beautifully, minimizing waste and maximizing the dramatic story telling. Their motivation is the same, where they differ, truly, is a matter of aesthetics. McCandless is looking for some replication of reality, while Carson’s concern is the idea. Her work tends to be very intellectually engaging and cerebral. It is very abstract, but the light follows very clearly defined rules of movement and transformation.

The conventional American style of lighting a play is in many ways an evolution of the McCandless idea. However, rather than a reworking of the initial impulse, an economy of volume, it has been a modification of the ‘area lighting.’ The stage is broken up into many little areas and a lot of little spotlights are pointed at those areas from various directions and in several colors. Virtually every theatre in the U.S. is equipped to light a show based on some variation of this idea. It is a very effective means of lighting a stage, but in many ways it feels like its aesthetic usefulness is coming to a close. I certainly do not envision seeing a broadway show radically diverge from this model any time soon, but something about it feels increasingly out of place in the modern world.

My fundamental problem is that it looks at the performer as an object. As little more than a moving prop that talks. The actor moves, the light moves, simple and easy. Yet, there is so much more available to light than mere illumination. Film understands this. The great cinematographers use light as a dynamic storytelling device in ways that are almost unthinkable in the theatre. There is a fallacy among a lot of people in the theatre that ‘if I can’t see their eyes I can’t hear them.’ Yet, Marlon Brando was heard throughout The Godfather while cloaked in shadow for most of his screen time. A cursory look at the Noir genre shows the almost limitless potential of light as storytelling device.

Revealing the actor to the audience is the primary goal of lighting. Yet how that revelation occurs is something that must be answered uniquely at every moment. A character is not simply illuminated. They are revealed. They are revealed existing within a given psychological and physical context. The are revealed through someone’s perception. They are revealed in relationship to some one or some thing. The performer does more, much more, than simply stand here, then there. They live. They exist as a complex matrix of thoughts and feelings and action. It is that whole that must be revealed, not just the deed of crossing the stage.

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Posted in design, opera, theory | 4 Comments »

un/conventional

Wednesday, July 12th, 2006

So far for next season I have been hired for two shows because of a reputation I have for “unconventional” lighting. I understand the intent behind this categorization, but I find it curious that my work is seen as unconventional. Perhaps this comes from the fact that I do not think, initially about theatricalizing the text, but approach my work at a more formal visual level. When I am lighting a show I do not think first about lekos and fresnels and gobos and gels. Rather I think visually in terms of what quality of light do I wish to create. Are we interested in directional lighting or soft diffuse lighting? Do we want a compressed grey scale or something very chromatic. Should the light be solid or dappled? This is why I love using images to discuss lighting a show. It keeps the conversation focused on what the lighting should look like rather than technical execution. That part comes later, much later. At the beginning of a process it is about looking and reacting.

Because of this approach I get sold on the look rather than the technique. As a result I use a mixture of traditional theatrical lights and other types of lighting instruments. Heather Carson taught at NYU my first year of graduate school and I had the pleasure of assisting her at San Francisco Opera this past season on a production of Norma. Heather is a designer known for her “unconventional” lighting. How she came about it is quite interesting. Working on a lot of European opera with Paul Steinberg, who creates large architectural sets, she began exploring architectural lighting. This search has led her to embrace an aesthetic composed almost exclusively sodium and mercury flood lights as well as fluorescent lighting. For those of you who are unfamiliar, sodium lights are the yellow street lamps and mercury, the white/green parking lot lights. Her work is quite stunning and very powerful.

Working and studying with her gave me a strong appreciation of the power and beauty of a much wider array of lighting instruments than I had previously explored. Let’s think of a lamp post at night. Most of us have probably seen some scene in a play that takes place outside where the characters are supposed to be standing under a street lamp. The lighting designer took a spot light, made the edges very soft and colored it some shade of yellow or amber. The effect feels little to nothing like a streetlight. An actual street lamp has a very beautiful quality to it. The light is very intense when you are close to it. Harsh and almost disorienting. As you move away the light thins out and dissipates rapidly. Far away there is a thin breath of light, barely visible. Certainly there is something here to be said for dramatic effect, but if what one wants is a streetlight, nothing can do that better than the real thing.

In Cupid and Psyche I was expressly interested in the quality of light. I was exploring the relationship between the formal quality of light and the creation of psychological space. We had quite a number of locations to deal with on a single set, so delineating the location came down to lighting. Two of the most important locations in the play were Cupid’s cloud where he laments his lovelstruck woe and the Apolo’s palace where Cupid takes Psyche to woo her. These two physical locations simultaneously represented psychological spaces as well. The palace was lit with 23 large tear shaped incandescent bulbs. They gave off a warm glow and reflected the other lights in their glass. This gave a kind of jewel like sparkle to the palace. The cloud on the other hand was a space of lovesick anguish. It was lit in a diffuse, soft, cold, grey light. Fluorescent tubes hidden behind the fabric walls of the set were the primary lighting for this location.

Had I limited myself to the conventional palette used by a theatrical lighting designer for Cupid and Psyche, the show would have been just that, conventional. In Suspendida we lit the entire piece in bare lightbulbs laying on the ground. Here the lights on the ground pulsed like breath, slow and deliberate, It was actually a very complex random sequence of programming, such that every time we performed the piece, the lighting was different. Looking beyond the conventional means of working a scene or an entire piece can be very difficult. A lot of the tradition has come about precisely because it works. But the sad reality is that a lot of work ends up looking very similar.

What I have found interesting is that as a result of doing a lot of “unconventional” lighting, I am able to take a conventional piece and give it a kind of unique quality. This is why I love working in a variety of mediums as well as in both traditional entertainment and more avant garde work. The different works talk to each other through me and inform one another in often surprising ways.

I was once working on a piece that wanted to be very “old-fashioned” in style, so I went back to the work of Stanley McCandless. What I ended up with was a modern interpretation of his ideas. And that research led me down some very interesting and exciting avenues of thought specifically in the realm of color theory that I might not have otherwise explored. The old and the new are often surprisingly close to one another. Both McCandless and Carson’s work is concerned with a kind of economy of volume. That is how to fill a stage both efficiently and beautifully. While the final product could not be more different, in many ways they stem from the same origin.

It is because of this that I find labels like ‘unconventional’ to be rather strange. In fact the whole idea of an Avant Garde sounds hopelessly mid-century to me. If for no other reason than the rate at which information is disseminated and absorbed into culture, the idea of an advanced rank of artists or producers of culture is just plain silly. Any work that has reached completion is already old and dead. The revolution is not a single event. It is not a deed or an act. Rather it is like the Aristotilian notion of Praxis, it is an underlying motivation that must and will continue until it has reached its final goal. If that final goal is a product then the revolution will die. If, rather it is a way of Being, a mode of existence, then it will continue on forever, always finding new sources of fuel and new means of expression.

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Posted in design, theatre, theory | 12 Comments »

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