Drama 16 Stage Lighting

1) Photo is from https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-spotlight-effect-3024470

2) THEME: Isolation

3) DESCRIPTION: A woman stands alone under a spotlight that is right above her head. The rest of the photo is dark. 

This photo is from a Huffington Post review of the 2015 Chichester Festival Theatre’s Guys and Dolls.

The theme is shadow; this photo from the number “Love Be a Lady” fits the shadow theme since shadows are used to emphasis the dark setting of this number: the sewer at night. This film uses shadow to create a pattern over the scene likely by way of a gobo.

Shadow strikes across the world in this photo. The darkness and shadows clash and are visible by the bright central white light. The light causes shadow and light patterned like the light went through prison bars or some similar bar structure in order to fall where and how it does in this photo. The lighting would fit Chicago’s cell block tango in certain parts, like when the innocent one speaks, since it has this dark feeling of imprisonment. The light has a mystery to it with its shadows and contrasting brightness. This mystery invites feelings of loneliness and thoughts of reflection since only shadows keep you company and the bright light is like that of a mirror reflecting a white wall in a lavatory. Shadow is a contrast and this photo contains that contrast though maybe not as starkly as a bright sun’s light causing shadows. The lighting here still has that stealthy and mysterious tone of shadow and the battle and yet symbiotic relationship between light and dark.

2 Feb. 2016 – 9:18am – Classroom 0028 in the Basement of Breslin Hall

The room was dark besides the florescent light I let in from the hallway as I cracked the door open and a soft bluish green glow from the computer screen way over on the other side of the room. This light from the screen illuminated a circle on the white wall to the left of it, and one of the technical difficulty emergency phones was located just off middle in the circle. It is the lighting on the wall that caught my eye, not the pools of florescent lights that wafted onto the floor a few feet in front of me.

The lighting was mysterious and eerie since it was surrounded by shadows and darkness and since it was such a peculiar color. This lighting would not have been out of place in a murder mystery play in which a character is scared of the phone because the ringing of the phone always signals something bad. Thanks to the hue, the lighting seemed sickly. In the murder mystery play example, this could represent the mindset and paranoia of the afraid character. It mirrors the feeling of quintessential fear that a person home alone at night who starts hearing spooky sounds must possess. Soft, circular, and contrasting with the surroundings like something out of another universe, it could have been the light that emitted from an alien spaceship’s beams of abduction. This lighting moment touched a chord and got under the viewer’s skin by being a reminder of mortality and that there is so much uncertainty out there. It presented the fear of the unseen and the fear of the unknown mysteries of life like when a person will die. Thus, the lighting resembled in color, distribution, and intensity whatever the torch or lamp of the Grim Reaper looks like and inspired fear and thoughts of the supernatural in its beholder.

1. 
2. I found this photo while procrastinating. Sadly, there was no author connected to the photo. It was part of a compilation of photos.(The link is http://iwastesomuchtime.com/on/?i=21713)
3. COLD
4. This picture, while the scene itself does not seem cold, the color and light gives off a cold emotion. The lonesome bench sits there, surrounded by an ominous blue fog. The tree’s dark branches hovering over, judging from afar. The pink on the ground and in the trees is warm, but it is this warmth that magnifies the cold emotion in the blue fog. The eye is drawn to it. There is no life, there is no presence. The sense of emptiness is enhanced by the open space filled with the blue light. The dark bench has no life to it. It seems so lifeless, nothing but an inanimate object in this light. The blue fog acts like a border, keeping the warmth of pink away. The pink in the background cannot even penetrate the blue fog. Imagine sitting on the bench, cuddled up on one side, stretching your coat over your legs to stay warm just like you used to do as a child. You feel cold, caused by the actual temperature or by the absence of lively substance. This lighting could be applied to the stage. This could create a cold social scene. The tree colors representing innocent bystanders surrounding the fog of baren existence. In the middle of this fog sits an old man, totally forgotten by his family. Everyone around him goes on with their lives, paying no attention to him as if he is not even there. He feels alone and cold, recounting old memories. He feels a shiver in his spine. The loneliness has set in and has transformed into physical feelings. His sadness is chilling. He views the people around him as an illusion. Surrounding yourself in happiness does not make you happy; it makes you envious of others. His cold fog will grow and push those that he cares about away. Eventually, he reaches a hypothermic stage of depression, and dies. No one notices though, the scene still seems as lifeless as it did before.