Drama 16 Stage Lighting

1) 3/19/13, 4:30pm, Girls’ Bathroom on the second floor of Lowe.

2) The sun in the West was shining through the frosted glass window in the bathroom.

3) The sun shining through the frosted glass made the world feel bright and sunny, like summer, and I was immediately happy. Well, briefly happy. I quickly remembered that this was a dirty lie, as I had just run through the cold, biting air to take refuge in the studio. It seemed a strange phenomenon that this frosted glass could disperse the colder, starker, should-not-be-wintery-but-is sunlight and make it seem so warm, inviting, and beautiful. I stood in the path of the light for a minute, until I realized how ridiculous I looked, and came to the conclusion that the studio should just be made up of entirely frosted glass windows.

8 February, 2012
South Campus, outside Lowe
Around  7:30 pm

I’m walking north just before the ramp to Lowe. Gold light of the mid-setting sun covers the south side of one of the trees outside the building.

I’ve come to realize that I spend a lot of time looking at, speaking and thinking about trees – and I think I’m okay with that. The settings changed drastically for me when I moved coasts for school, and one of the most noticeable differences (besides the flatness of Long Island) was the trees. There aren’t nearly as many evergreens here as there are at home, just as there aren’t many non-evergreens at home like there are here. So naturally, I notice trees quite a bit. This particular instance really struck me because it was in the middle of the sunset, which is something I typically associate with the beach, if only because of how many I witnessed on the Puget Sound. What hit me most was the pure gold of the sunlight, and how that was visible even in the murky brown of the bark. It was also pretty contrasting, as the natural grooves and pockets in the bark were cast in shadows, giving them even more dimension with dark on one side and gold on the other. The tree was tall and scraggly and devoid of leaves, which in my mind collided with the gold of the sunset in a way that spring and winter really don’t. There’s usually more of a natural fade from one to the other – maybe with some freak snow storms every so often – but seeing these two examples of seasons so drastically converge startled me to an extent. You never really think of the seasons as being separate, rather cyclical, but at their heights they can be severely different.

Wednesday February 16th, 11:00 Outside Lowe Hall (cigarette pit)

2) The light is very orange. It is relatively dim. There is a dark shadow blocking out most of what is visible, and some light spilling on to the side of the building from a window right outside. The light from the window is bright white. There is very little visibility.

3) The light is foreboding and creepy. The orange seems other worldy, and the butts of cigarettes scattered on the dirt are only illuminated enough that they can be seen and not distinguished. The light spilling out the open window is cut off by the dark shadow cast by the railing and by the side of the ramp. It looks like jumping down, even though it is a small drop, would be very unpleasant.