The first step to becoming a visual artist is to develop one’s visual thinking. Once you can think visually you can begin to devise an approach to a particular creation. If you are a designer, there is a bit more than just visual thinking that must go on. You must approach the text (be it the words of a play, the movement of a dance, or the music of an opera) as a kind of translator. A translator from the verbal, kinesthetic, or musical into the visual.
Visual translations, like linguistic translations, can occur on several levels either discretely or simultaneously. One of the biggest issues in verbal translation is with poetry in verse. The translator finds themselves with the conundrum of staying true to the literal translation or to the verse or to the “poetic intent.” Any combination of these may be used and each will result in a different translation.
Chinese Tong poetry for instance works with its particular meter because the language it was developed in is tonal with few to no polysyllabic words. Thus translating a Tong poem will, almost by necessity, compromise either the meter or the meaning. And meaning is tricky on its own. The word “Love” in English is a large word that encompasses many meanings. In Greek they have many smaller words each with their own unique nuance. Agape and Eros mean very different things, yet would both be translated as Love, in English.
These problems arise for the designer just as, if not more, strongly than for the verbal translator. Is it more important to literally set the play in a drawing room or should the emotional tenor of the piece be of primary importance? Do we concern ourselves with an exact replica of 4:30 in the afternoon or was the writer’s intent to have a softening of the light? Are the corsets from the period appropriate or is the idea of a woman constricted by social norms of primary importance and thus the corsets should be exaggerated and extreme?
Any number of questions may arise in the pre-production phase wherein these questions can, should, and I would argue, must be asked. We are asking our audiences to spend a not insignificant amount of money and a good chunk of time. Thus it is incumbent upon us to go as deep with the work as we can go. To ask all the questions necessary of good translators such that we may give our audience the truest, to us, interpretation of the text.
Anyone can memorize lines, but it takes a depth of analysis and rigor to be a Marlon Brando. So too can anyone design scenery, but only a mind wholly committed to the dramaturgical rigors of visual translation can be a John Conklin. As lighting designer Jennifer Tipton once said, “only 10 percent of an audience notices the lighting, but 99 percent are affected by it.”
The issues that designers face are not just “details that only they would notice” but the very foundation of the subconscious experience of the audience. There may only be one guy during an entire run who notices that the uniform is two years out of date, but it will color his experience of the piece. And, as live entertainment is a collective and communal experience, it will affect the experience of those near him and ripple out and through the audience. God, as they say, is in the details.
As lighting designers our job is doubly difficult. Not only do we have to reconcile our visual language with that of the text, but we must also integrate it with the vocabulary of the scenery and the costumes. Since our work in many ways comes last, the set is on stage and the performers are in costume when we begin lighting, it is even more critical that we look deeply into the needs of the text and understand the visual language at play before us. Our visual reading of the production design will give us a direction to approach the larger question of translation.
Of course we would have been involved in the design discussions from an early stage in the process, but it becomes critical that we read the work before us anew and note any shifts and changes our translation will require with the addition of the other visual elements. We must stay fresh and in the present. Then we can alter our translation in response to the shifting performance as we move through the text in rehearsals.
It is a balancing act. A four dimensional puzzle that will be completed, one way or another, when the curtain rises on opening night. The audience wants to be transported. For them to be transported we must become translated.
