Drama 16 Stage Lighting

Original Image

VLL

This is a photo of Taranto, Italy. it is taken from http://www.italianvisits.com, which seems to be an Italy-specific travel agency or travel guide.

This is for the Nightlife theme.

In this photo, it is not totally night yet – we can still see what looks like natural light in the sky; it is perhaps dusk. I take from this, rather, a sense of anticipation. I rarely consider the light from street lamps to be warm and fluid, but when it reflects on the evening water in this picture it does seem to have a sort of sensual warmth to it. It is soft and welcoming, and enticing. It leaves me excited for the night that is about to fall over the scene.

Rick's Café Américain (Humphrey Bogart and Dooley Wilson)

Courtesy of www.doctormacro.com (http://www.doctormacro.com/Images/Bogart,%20Humphrey/Annex/Annex%20-%20Bogart,%20Humphrey%20%28Casablanca%29_06.jpg)

NIGHTLIFE

It’s the first place my mind goes when I hear “nightclub,” and I wish there were still more nightclubs like it. The lighting is interesting: it is bright but not particularly warm (though the colors may be warm, who can tell). It makes the light-colored costumes pop, and it seems like almost all the characters are dressed in lighter colors with dark accents to make the room brighter. The bright halos around the practical lights on the set are also both good sources of bright light as well as very interesting design elements, making the club unusually bright (considering it supposedly operates only at night). The majority of the light seems to be coming from off to the right, casting long shadows on the floor. Overall the scene feels bright and upbeat, but still nocturnal.

Location: Waiting for food at CPK. Thursday, March 3rd. Even later after 11pm (though not yet midnight.)

Objective Description: One of those tv fixtures that are all over campus is on the wall of the Starbucks behind me. It is reflected in the tile wall of CPK.

Subjective Description: The light itself does not conjure up any poetry – it is rather an accessory to something that had already been brewing. My brain, when I saw this light, was totally fried at the end of a long day at the end of a long week. The act of looking up and seeing an unremarkable lighting effect – indeed one that, any other day, I might not bother to notice – set me off on some inner intellectual and emotional tirade. In retrospect, I can only go back to the “you see a light in a tunnel,” question on the last lighting test, because it provides an interesting metaphor to explain the sum of the inner process. Presumably, the light is either a train or the mouth of the tunnel. Either way, it signals some end. This time, however, it is just an unremarkable light source – a bulb hanging from an extension cord, perhaps – while the tunnel stretches back into darkness on either side.

1.) Thursday Mar. 3rd 2011, 1:45 P.M. Spiegel Theater.

2.) Phone light used on stage during Styles class.

3.) Today during Styles class a group doing Beckett’s “Play” wanted to practice their scene with the spot-lighting effect that Beckett calls for, and so three of us volunteered to use the “flashlights” on our cell phones to light them each only when they were talking. The whole building was dark except for the faces of the actors. The isolating effect of the light helped them with the scene, and the rapid shifts in the room helped their classmates focus on a very difficult-to-follow scene. It was very unnerving. The color of the light too, the bright bluish-white of camera flash bulbs, helped add to the sense of bleakness.

Sunset on 3/3, Calkins Quad

A bare tree is visible from Calkins quad. In the uppermost branches, a cardinal is perched. The sun has set behind the buildings already, and only the top of the tree is still lit, giving the cardinal a brilliant backlight while simultaneously bringing out the red of his plumage.

Though it is crisp and the Long Island wind is evident, the cardinal in the sunlight feels hopeful and warm. The light just brushing the edge of the branches gives them a livelier feel. It feels like spring, even if the temperature does not permit.

1.) Sunday Feb. 27th 2011, 1:00 P.M. Adams Playhouse stage.

2.) Side light from the wings during rehearsal.

3.) In an attempt to approximate the amount of light during a particular speech, Royston had the stage management turn off all  the stage worklights, leaving on only the worklights in the wings, and the ghost light off stage right. This created a creepy simultaneous sidelight, and since everyone onstage was perfectly in profile, their faces were heavily accented. It accomplished making the actors feel uncomfortable, and from an audience perspective it looked cold and otherworldly, which I think is the goal for the actual lighting during that moment of the play.

Location: Unispan, Thursday, March 3rd. Sometime soon after 11pm

Objective Description: The florescent ceiling lights are on – the Unispan is well lit. The lights reflect in the walls.

Subjective Description: There is a precise sort of uniform nature in the line of florescent lights ahead of me. It is cold, and unfeeling. The reflections of the lights on the walls suggest a similar coldness – perhaps because I have come to affiliate the tendency of a surface to reflect light with coldness – glass is cold, shiny metal is cold, that polished and possibly fake marble that one sometimes finds in hotel lobbies or somesuch is cold. Though well lit, the uniform nature and the sense of coldness, coupled with the lack of activity on the Unispan, created a distinct sense of forced isolation.