Day: May 7, 2015

With it decided that the verbatim and expectation monologues would be lit by spotlights it was time to address lighting the rest of the scenes. On the whole I decided to use general washes or pools of light to light scenes in which there would be more than one actor on stage or if there was a lot of dialogue, such as the songs. This was so the audience could see and hear the actors clearly as ‘actors who are difficult to see will usually be difficult to hear’ (Reid 2001, p1).

I decided to only light part of the stage if I wanted to draw attention away from the actors setting up for the next scene, for example Hope’s monologues took place at the front of the stage and were lit with strip lighting so upstage could be set up in blackout.

We also used torches on stage as a form of lighting whilst the rest of the stage was in blackout, with the light focusing on the character’s shoes. This idea of the actors being in control of their lighting and deciding what the audience could see and what they could not, was influenced by Macbeth in Pitch Black (London Contemporary Theatre, 2013) which I saw at Lincoln Drill Hall. I found as an audience member my other senses were heightened when my sight was taken away and particularly for Ashleigh’s diaries as we wanted the audience to focus on the story they were hearing and the movement of the actors’ feet.

WORKS CITED

Reid, F. (2001) The Stage Lighting Handbook. Sixth Edition.London and New York: Routledge.

London Contemporary Theatre (2013) Macbeth in Pitch Black. [performance] Lincoln: Lincoln Drill Hall, 8 Nov.

My choice to use spotlights to light the verbatim scenes stemmed from the initial informal chat with Darren. When I told him that our script featured verbatim he stated that the most important thing in ‘verbatim is the words’ (Page 2015). This in my mind meant that the verbatim scenes would require microphones, in order for the actors to accurately perform the verbatim without having to worry about whether or not they would be heard by the audience. In First World Problems (The Lincoln Company, 2014), the actor spoke in to a microphone when reading out ‘problems’ that members of the audience had written that night. The use of the microphone led myself as an audience member to focus solely on the actor who was reading. I decided that our verbatim microphones would appear in the centre of a hard focused spotlight down stage left, whilst the rest of the stage was in blackout so the audience knew where to focus their attention. I decided to use a coloured light (Lee 201 Cold) to suggest that this was the cold face of reality, as many of the verbatim stories were emotionally challenging, for example the Forced Marriage verbatim.

(Verbatim Microphone on Tech Day by Clare Owen 2015)

In contrast there would be another spotlight and microphone used down stage right, which we referred to as the ‘Expectation Microphone’. Here the actors would address the audience with expectations of life events for example ‘Santa will always bring me good presents.’ (Forefront 2015) The spotlight used was a soft focus spot with the colour Lee 103 Warm, to create a hazy warm feeling as the actors’ were stating happy expectations about their futures.

(Expectations Microphone on Tech Day by Clare Owen 2015)

 

WORKS CITED

Forefront (2015) Shoes to Fill. Lincoln.

Owen, C (2015) Photos of Microphone lighting.

Page, D. (2015) Informal Chat about Lighting and Sound. [interview] Interviewed by Clare Owen and Emmie Kearns, 10 March.

The Lincoln Company (2014) First World Problems. [performance] Lincoln: LPAC, 26 September.