Drama 16 Stage Lighting

Source: Me, taken by Mike Cicchetti through Cicchetti Multi-Media around the Lawrence T. Hubert School of Communication building, posted on November 28, 2016

Theme: Mysterious

Description: One out of 11 photos I did, this was taken late in the afternoon outside with a single light used on my face. Besides the white Bauta mask, the only thing that is seen is my hair and my eyes. What am I think when I look into the lens, right at Mike the photographer? Do I want to hurt him? Am I holding back my anger? Is it just the camera angle that makes me look threatening? That is something that I am interested in revealing with acting. To me, acting is taking off the mask, while in real life you are forced to keep it on.

This photo was taken by me.

The theme is spooky and it fits this theme because it looks like it could be taken out of a spooky scene from a horror or Halloween film.

The lighting is white and bright like a space alien’s ship coming to abduct someone or that horridly spotless idea of the future that many films attempt to portray. The bright lighting depicted in the animated film Wall-E for inside the space ship where the lazy humans are is similar to this bright moonlight. The light is expansive causing a soft halo to surround it in the night sky. The brightness at night also is spooky because night is meant to be dark in the minds of many. This bright moonlight might peer into a window and wake people up like how the people were wakened up during the Light Riots. The light backlights the tree making it a shadowy silhouette. Moonlight has a history of spookiness with witches flying across it, cows jumping over it, and werewolf’s howling to it; this moonlit picture harkens back to this tradition with the light’s boldness and the silhouetted tree’s bareness. The white light and lingering halo of grey contrast with the night-time blackness like a mysterious power; this starkness and utter lack of an array of colors and stark would be enough to spook a child into hiding under the covers. For all a little child knows, this could be the eye of a huge monster coming to destroy it; and the power (high value) and abundance of this light makes it imposing. The dead, dark world that some might think exists in blackness comes back to life with the bright glow of the moon. However, it is not as alive as day; it is like a half-life or perhaps undead life. After all, in the total dark, one cannot see that the world does not look as alive as the day, but in partial light one can. Thus, the lighting in this picture is spooky as it is a sign that scary things might be out and since it makes things that look bright and alive during the day appear dead, creepy, and unnerving through the limited, bright, far-reaching, and contrasting with the dark surroundings white moonlight.

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)March 8th, 2012 – 4:15 – Spiegel Theater

2)Alli Fair and I were chosen to help Meaghan Maloney during Royston’s directing class by acting out a scene. The onstage lights made it near impossible to see the
crowd.

3) There is a reason why I am not a performance major, and the lucky group of people in Royston’s directing class got to witness a performance by Alli Fairchild and myself. After climbing to the stage, I looked out to the audience and was blinded by the bright white lights. All I could see was the silhouette of every member of the crowd. The bright light filled the top of my vision with blinding light. It gave an ominous yet holy feel to the situation. The feeling and effect can be freezing. Stage lights are a huge cause of stage fright. I could not see who was in the audience, it adds a sense of mystery and causes one to wonder, the imagination goes wild. What is in the unknown?