Here are some more pictures of Windows produced last October by INTAR at the Workshop Theatre.
Written and Directed by Sylvia Bofill
Scenery by Jian Jung
Costumes by Oana Botez-Ban
Enjoy!
Posts Tagged ‘windows’
More Windows Pictures
Saturday, December 2nd, 2006New Windows Pictures
Friday, December 1st, 2006I just got some new pictures of Windows from the scenic designer. Here is a sample image until I have time to go through and process them.
The costume was simple enough, but when do we get the candy?
Tuesday, October 31st, 2006In the Wicca tradition, Halloween is the day of the year where the veil is thinnest between the living and the dead. It is the holiest day of the year. The day when all the witches can STOP wearing their costumes and go out dressed as themselves. The thin veil carries over to the Catholic tradition with the dia de los muertos in Mexico.
It is a day of transformation. A day when costumes go on and real life comes off. Or real life goes on and costumes come off. What I love about Halloween costumes is that there is a metaphoric truth to them, even if one is not literally a witch or a zombie.
Of course I wore the same costume I wear every day, the Lighting Designer Costume. I love it. Its easy to do, works with my existing wardrobe and changes every year. This year I wore a brown striped shirt with green slacks and brown shoes. I thought it looked quite good. I had several meetings today. One with the director of Antigone and the other with the lighting designer I am assisting in January at the Virginia Opera. Since getting home I have made dinner and after writing this, will get on to work on a few projects that I did not finish this afternoon. No Halloween parties for me this evening.
The subject of transformation got me thinking about color and how color can be used to transform a space in the theatre. The most common means of changing colors is to turn off a light of one particular color and turn one on of another color. Another very common means of transforming color is through the use of color scrollers.
A scroll might have 13 or 23 or 42 or however many colors on it. As you advance the scroll one direction or the other, the color changes. The problem with these is that, because they are preset colors, you might have a blue and then a green and then a red. So if you want the stage to transform from blue to red you either have to go through the green frame or turn the light off, change the color and turn it back on. Both of these methods force the designer to do two transitions with a specific intermediate color. Further, neither of these methods allows for a true transformation of color.
In two recent shows, The Children and Windows, we needed real transformations of color. The Children used color faders, a device that employs the three primary colors of subtracting color mixing to be able to mix, literally millions, of colors out of a single light. In Windows we used CXI‘s. These are somewhere in between the Color Faders and a traditional scroller. Rather than using a single string of various colors the CXI uses two strings with preset levels of Cyan, Yellow and Magenta to mix thousands of colors.
They both allow for more transformations of color than do a traditional scroller. However, the CXI’s still have occasional large “steps” between colors while the Faders are continuously smooth and effortless. Depending upon the type of show one might want a traditional scroller, a CXI or a Color Fader. They all have advantages and each one deals with time and change in a different manner.
And that is as close to a product review as we will see in this forum.
I am listening to Aida for the first time. It is a fantastic piece that I have only heard selections from, but never all the way through. It looks like I might be lighting a production of it this summer. It is probably too early to be talking about this project yet, but I am excited as I love Opera, and Verdi is just fantastic. I have not lit an Opera since last January when I did the Seven Deadly Sins.
lay out view
Sunday, October 29th, 2006Here is all of Windows in thumbnails. I did not like any of my pictures. Hopefully the ones taken by the set designer will be better. The colors look nice all arranged like this, so its not a total loss.
We apologize for the technical difficulties
Monday, October 23rd, 2006Strange. After a show is open I rarely see another performance. Sometimes I do not even know when the shows close. I assume there are small problems that arise from time to time but generally take the view that no news is good news and keep going on. Well, the two shows that I have up both had major problems this weekend.
Twenty Years of Agnes, on its closing performance ran into a problem with the computer that runs the lighting cues and the first half of the show had to be done with a generic wash turned on by someone who was there. I got a voicemail about this when I emerged from the subway in Brooklyn a half hour before the show was to begin. I could not have made it in time to solve the problem. Act two was solved, or so they told me. C’est la vie.
Windows is apparently running into some big electrical problems as the archaic electrical system at the Workshop Theatre seems to be breaking. Now the Master Electrician on Windows is the Production Electrician for Playwrights Horizons, so I when the theatre says “It must be something you did,” I am having trouble finding that to bear any basis in fact. But what can you do? It was rather disappointing when I got a phone call from the Production Manager asking me which lights could I afford to lose if I had to get rid of 4 of the 44 dimmers in the space. “Um, none.” Hopefully the problem has been solved.
One must, by necessity put so much faith in other people to maintain and stay true to your work. Electricians maintain a designer’s work after the show is open. A director handles a playwright’s text after it is printed. The stage manager holds the entire thing together once the creative team has gone away.
I really don’t like to think about these problems. But they are very real. And there is no way around it. One can not afford to get upset by it. That would only wear you down. Still, it is disappointing.
Evolutionary Aesthetics
Wednesday, October 18th, 2006The process for Windows has been quite interesting. Two and a half weeks in the theatre from load-in to opening(tonight). Twice as much time as I have ever had to work on a show. As a result there has been a lot of time to evolve the visual storytelling. The basic idea that we had from the start is there, utilize color transformations as a primary source of visual storytelling. When working in a situation as limited as the one we are in(only 44 dimmers) I have found that color can be a very useful means of differentiating time, space and psychology while still being able to clearly and cleanly light the performers.
The play is very complex from a lighting perspective. As the text utilizes dance and movement along with language to move through its ever shifting symbolic dreamscape there is a need for rather sophisticated cueing. Transitions from one image to the next occur in many parts with different lights moving at different rates. The light board we are using is not designed to do “Part Cues.” It can do them, but the programming for it is difficult and convoluted as that functionality was added on after the initial release of the software.
We have two main color ideas, a set of lightboxes as the back wall and an overhead system of color scrollers and then all the various conventional lights. All of these elements need to move and transform at different rates. I made a distinct choice with this show to use only colors I had never(or rarely) used before. A few of the colors I had used once, but most were wholly new to me. It made for some interesting surprises. The entire palette was composed of very soft colors, colors that recede from the eye, that try desperately to mix with other colors. The general effect of that was a very colorful palette that is perceived like clear light. Exactly the effect I wanted. The trouble came with the inherent difficulty then of giving a kind of sharpness and crispness to the images. I really had to work the color balance to make it possible. The colors all wanted to fall in a pile of mush, so it was quite some effort to make them stand up solidly.
Since the colors on the lightboxes were new, it took me a few days to really get the precise control over them I needed to mix the necessary colors for each moment. Once this happened I was able to start working out the crispness and softness needed in the various compositions. Since light, and color in particular, is inherently relative, if one aspect of the color is not under total control the whole stage picture begins to fall apart. But having so much time in the theatre I knew I could afford the risk of these difficult and troublesome colors.
Wrestling with the color palette was trouble enough, but we were also evolving the style of visual storytelling and making substantial rewrites to the script. There are lots of live color transformations, but we also had to find the moments of clarity. We had to find the light as well as the moments of darkness. While the initial color idea has held throughout, the final compositions are nothing like what I had expected. This is one of the wonderful things about the rehearsal process. You come to the table with a clear idea, but also with the flexibility to transform that idea into something else. Then you turn off the head, turn on the eyes, and flow with the play.
I always love the unexpected moments. Often I will include things in a plot that I have no idea when or how they will be used, but that I know will be useful. These hunches can turn into some of the most exciting parts of the technical rehearsal, as they become integral to the visual language of the play.
The production changes every time it is worked. Working one scene changes its relationship to all the other scenes and calls their composition into question. So those scenes change and again the whole is transformed. It is an amazing and fascinating negotiation. A play is such a fragile thing. Every single aspect of a production intimately tied to every other. It can be like herding cats to pull all the various elements together. Sometimes a single element can throw the whole thing off. Sometimes the evolutionary process never quite makes it to a new and complete species. In this case it is a workshop production and the script was only set a few days ago. As a result none of us have fully processed what this thing is. It is a wholly conditional situation. It has been difficult, but a lot of fun to work on.
Windows Opens
Wednesday, October 18th, 2006Windows, produced by INTAR, opens Today, October 18th at The Workshop Theatre. 312 W36th Street, 4th Floor.
Ticket info here.
I ran out of pen colors
Monday, October 16th, 2006
We have been in tech for so many days I had to reuse my black pen. Monday’s project is to get my cue list into the computer.
Exhausting to say the least
Tuesday, October 10th, 2006Last night was a benefit for the Gotham Stage Company, the producers who did last springs successful Sake with the Haiku Geisha and are producing this December’s Becoming Adele. The evening was written by Randall David Cook, who wrote Sake and was directed by Jason Eagan.
The situation was one that I have dealt with many many times. It is called a “One Off.” Arrive at the theatre early in the morning. Begin writing light cues as fast as possible and then do a show that evening. Quick and dirty. Of course the expectation is still there to have a high quality finished product. So the result is one of pure craft. One does not have time to think or judge or guess. Rather one’s past experience and snap decisions are quite literally all you have time for. I finished writing light cues right before we began the dress rehearsal and the rehearsal ended right before we had to open the house. Spending my Monday off in another tech might not have been the best idea for my overall sanity, but it was a nice evening and I am glad to have participated.
On top of all this I was operating on very little sleep. No sleep, no time, and no room for mistakes.
. . .
. . .
So this morning I am sitting dutifully at my computer dealing with a pile of emails relating to future shows and scheduling and so on and so forth when the internet suddenly goes down. After dealing with some other new apartment issues I left and am now in a mid-town cafe writing this. The emails, having been composed prior to leaving the house, are all sent. And I have rehearsal for Windows soon.
Windows rehearsals have been going well. It is about the opposite of the benefit/one-off schedule. We have teched through the show, done some good slow detail work through act one and have a run through tonight to show Eduardo, the artistic director of INTAR, where we are. The show opens next Wednesday the 18th. So a lot of time to really get some nice detail work in.
It’s funny. I wonder how many people in the average audience would notice the difference between the lighting in a show done in four hours and a show done in two and a half weeks. Its a question I may never know the answer to. I do believe that lighting, in many ways, works best as action painting. That the initial, off the cuff subconscious response is somehow the truest. One does the drafting well ahead of time to arrange the palette, but the composition is, and can only be, done real time. I firmly believe that time must be set aside to get the real detail work done, but as for the overall shape, I think it works best to adopt an attitude similar to that for spontaneous prose. Much like a blog post, write in half an hour, spell check, find links, publish.
And now to tech.
in/visible art
Saturday, October 7th, 2006I see very little purpose to art that does not in some way make visible that which is otherwise invisible. At a literal level this might apply to my love of lighting design, but at a deeper level it is even more true. Approaching a text as a kind of hypothetical, one can see many avenues an eventual production could go down. The Greeks have been performed in everything from Togas to business suits to both at the same time. How the characters are clothed, how the performance space is designed/chosen, how the scenes are lit, are all responses to the initial question the text asks. Sometimes these aspects of production respond in the form of an answer and sometimes another question. Sometimes both.
The idea of revealing what was otherwise unseen is important to keep in mind. I had a wonderful moment in tech the other night. We were lighting the last scene of act one, and after we had got through it we took a break. The lighting for the first act roughly takes on an arc of colorful to clear light. The focus shifts in the lighting from an awareness of its chromatic nature to light as the compliment of shadow. I spoke with the writer/director about it and she said she was very pleased, but had never intended the scene to be, as she said “black and white” but that for her it helped anchor a scene that is heavily imagistic and can easily run the risk of falling into caricature.
It is not as if lighting alone can create an idea that is not already present. The language of light does not work that way. Light is more akin to the photographers lens. It does not create a situation. Rather, it frames a scenario and through that framing reveals and places focus upon something that might otherwise not be noticed. It can make the unconscious conscious. The invisible visible. It exists in that space between presence and absence, being at once a wave and a particle. It rides that liminal space and therein lies its power.
As Peter Brook says in The Empty Space, “to comprehend the visibility of the invisible is a life’s work. Holy art is an aid to this, and so we arrive at a definition of holy theatre. A holy theatre not only presents the invisible but also offers conditions that make its perception possible.” That perception of the invisible is central to the nature of light. To guide and focus attention such that the multiplicity of the layers of reality become perceived at once. The expansion of visual consciousness is an essential aspect to an art form like theatre where one has multiple vectors of sensory and mental stimulation through which to negotiate.
I am not sure that light ever gives an answer. The more I think upon it, the more it seems to me to be a medium devoted to questioning. Light asks fundamental questions about the nature of the subject it illuminates. What is this thing? Why is it here? And what does it do? But it asks them in the form on a statement. And herein lies some of the mystery to me of the nature of light. It is a question masquerading as a statement. The wave that is also particle, asks something new every time it states a response to a question.
In many ways light is the forward movement behind action in the dialectical process that is the creation of a work of theatre. At least for the visual component. Light synthesizes all the visual elements, setting, costume and staging, to create a new thesis. And light is a thesis that demands an anti-thesis. By its very presence it creates its opposite in shadow. The same with color. Take two identical lights and color one of them pink, then other looks green. Light is wholly relational and never exists outside some context. It can not be seen without something to bounce off of. Invisible itself, it makes visible the otherwise invisible.
