The Moment in Every Dawn

I have three very exciting design projects going on at the moment between now and early September.  Due to some personal circumstances, I’m not able to take on any more design work after September this year, for a while - so I’m hoping to make the most of these lovely projects.

The first one which is coming up fast is 4Larks’ new production, Undine, an adaptation based on the same myth that The Little Mermaid was based around.  I have been working with Tom Willis as co-designer and it has been an excellent collaboration so far.  It’s looking beautiful.

The project following Undine is called Medea of Baghdad and is directed by Tanja Beer, who I worked with on the last Union House Theatre production.  It is a strong one-woman script and should be a wonderful collaboration (and my first show where I am officially part of the set design team!).

Immediately after Medea is Union House Theatre’s 2nd semester show - Memmie le Blanc by Hillary Bell.  I posted a bit about this project yesterday, and the inspiration behind the design.  As usual, the production and design teams at Union House are lovely and brilliant and an absolute joy to work with.

And how much does the Memmie le Blanc poster look like a Brooke Shaden picture (see previous Tumblr post)?  This was a total coincidence - I told Tom Gutteridge that I had discovered Brooke’s work and wanted to pursue her style in the lighting design, and then he sent me the poster!

I’d like to thank the lovely Julia over at luminarystudies for introducing me to the beautiful, surreal world of Brooke Shaden’s photography.  I was telling Julia about how I am lighting an upcoming show in a way that will be quite unconventional - very surreal - and she sent me to Brooke’s website. 

Below are some of the images that I’m looking to almost recreate in the lighting design for Memmie le Blanc by Hillary Bell.  This is always an interesting dilemma for me - and I’d love to know what you all think - when it comes to ‘replicating’ another designers look or style.  I’ve done shows previously based on this idea; one where the lighting design was modelled off the paintings of Caravaggio, and another where we we had used Bill Henson’s photography as inspiration.  I am never quite sure if this is seen as a ‘cop-out’ because I am ‘stealing another persons ideas’.  The honest truth is, though, that I find it far harder to try and mimic another artists’ style and translate it into a theatrical context than if I just went my own way.  It’s a huge challenge that I really love, and it is just so satisfying when people look at the final production stills and say “Wow - that looks just like a Bill Henson photograph/Caravaggio painting”, and I haven’t even had to tell them that that was what was behind the original design idea.

Here are some of Brooke’s images that I will be modelling the lighting design from.

Here is a really beautiful project by Mischer Traxler called Relumine.  

They are a collection of old floor and desk lamps that have been retrofitted to hold a fluorescent tube - one end connected to one lamp, the other connected to the other, in a seriously beautiful amalgamation of the old & the new.  This is one of the most innovative uses of the fluorescent tube that I have seen in a while, and I can’t wait to see more of this kind of innovation with sustainable lighting technology.

To all the lighting designers out there who fight for energy conservation and green lighting - what is your opinion of us theatre lighting designers who consume thousands of watts of power per day for the sake of art?

I am not saying that theatre lighting designers are not environmentally conscious.  It’s simply that LED and other forms of green technology are not developed enough yet for us to be able to use them fully in our craft.  (It depends on the context, but that’s a whole different debate.)

And so, as a result, running a theatre season is still an incredibly energy-inefficient process.  Should we suck it up and just use the green technology?  Are we judged because we are less environmentally driven than architectural lighting designers?