You cannot
touch a fresh lamp. The oils on your
skin, if they contaminate the glass, will heat up so much when the instrument
gets power that the lamp will literally explode. Which will render the work of re-lamping a
fixture utterly pointless. And it is
work. Careful, precise work. You are advised to remove the housing
entirely which necessitates multiple trips in the Genie, the use of which is in
and of itself an ordeal. So you bring the housing back to earth. It’s hot.
Very hot. So, gingerly, you undo
the mechanisms that keep the old lamp in place and remove it. There is nothing quite so beautiful as a
burnt out lamp. As it ages, it clouds
and dims; a smoky haze collects around the inside surface rendering the once
clear glass into a silvery fog. When it
finally goes, it goes like a supernova marking the glass with streaks of blues,
purples, and greens. I have even seen
pink once on a lamp that blew particularly spectacularly. All that then remains is to install the new
lamp – without touching the glass – and bring it back up to the grid.
¢ ¤ ¢
I
worked my first show as a sophomore. It
was the fall play, Homer’s Odyssey,
at Brunswick. I worked on Deck Crew for
that particular show and was thrown fully into the madness that is Baker
Theater. This happened to be a Deck Crew
of four including the freshman who was tasked with cueing the three of us who
actually performed the deck moves. I
learned innumerable lessons during that first show – perhaps most importantly
the hierarchy of who can make sarcastic comments about what – but what sticks
out for me is my memory of my first hang and focus. The hang and focus is an all-day and often
full weekend ordeal. During such a call,
the crew removes, rehangs, and refocuses the lighting instruments to the
satisfaction of the designer/master electrician. Efficiently run, I’ve participated in one
that took 12 hours; inefficiently run, the hang and focus can be a
Friday-Saturday-Sunday affair. But there
is nothing like it. Lighting calls for
order and precision but also for adaptation.
The preparation for a hang and focus involves a significant amount of
paper work. Instrument schedules must be
written up, light plots must be drawn, and plans for the day must be made. Spreadsheets and coffee are the lighting
designer’s best friends. But this is not
work. Certainly I do work; I have stayed
up far later than I have needed to on many a night in February for the
musical. But I love every second of it.
It
is intensely gratifying to stare into your instruments during a dimmer check
and see that, not only is everything working, but also that there is order and
precision in every placement. The preparation
for cueing is all about order and precision.
The late nights up doing paperwork, the weekends in the theater, these
are ordered affairs. In order to execute
a vision, the vision must be charted and diagramed. I am not a generally impulsive person. I like paperwork. It gives me the security that I know where
everything is, what it does, and how it works.
The subtle things that no one sees, these are the products of careful
planning and precision.
However,
though I am now famous for my checklists and have been immortalized in Baker
Theater with the phrase “to go all Lauren on something”[1],
lighting is all about adaptation. One
can lay out a set design, craft a miniature, draw up a cut list, and build a
finished product with something to show for your work along the way. Costumes can cut patterns, make mock ups, and
finally sew costumes out of the fabric that a performer will be wearing on
stage. This is not so with lights. While there exist programs that can show a
rough idea of what a design might look like for a given scene, being good at
lighting design is about knowing that your director might decide last minute
have the entire cast come on as monks for a scene so you’d better have some
Bastard Amber[2]
close by. Lighting, above all, adapts. For all the precision and order of the
planning process, designing a show is about seeing what looks good on the
performers in the moment. It is
immediate and changing and beautiful.
The right light can make or break a scene. For me, live mixing and cueing with
performers on stage during a live rehearsal are intense and enjoyable. I do not have time to plan; while live mixing
one must simply do. And after the first few moments of telling myself that
there’s no way I can possibly pull this off, I settle into a rhythm of simply doing. There is a glorious Zen to live mixing. It is love guided by knowledge.
No comments:
Post a Comment