A production-tech colleague recommended me to the Arlington Friends of the Drama as someone who might be able to help with lighting their Spring 2018 show, a lively cops-n-baddies comedy called Unnecessary Farce. It seemed like a nice opportunity to get in on a community-theatre project at a design level again, as it had been some time since I'd done that. As the show's director noted at the very first production meeting, the actors do all the heavy lifting in this one and lighting was about the simplest aspect of the whole thing -- it could easily be as little as four or five cues, a generic wash up/down for each act. Perhaps appropriate for my first go in a new space, but I found some fun subtleties to tackle and additional areas to get involved in as things progressed. |
As show planning and execution got under way there wasn't that much for
me to do early on, although I did go in a couple of times to shoot some
measurements and then stuck around to help with minor set-build work.
I was able to take someone's previous circuit plan diagram and rework
it into a useful design aid, in the form of many layers in a
GIMP image file
[right-click to download]
with little templates that I could move around.
Eventually the working set-wall placement got added to that, and I could
figure out where I could actually best originate light from.
Circuits would come from whatever was handy nearby.
The basics of the .XCF file can be of good use to the GIMP-savvy on future shows. | |
At one point during the play there's a stray gunshot, and the original idea was to have a special lamp practical motorized to spin its shade around and expose a big bullet hole to the audience while the cast stares at "where that shot went". A very clever idea, but unfortunately it wasn't going to work out the way it was originally intended. |
Even though it seemed like a simple base plot, there were
interesting subtleties to take into account, notably keeping all
visible motion confined within its own designated room.
As I wrote to my technical colleagues at some point during all this:
The set is two rooms in a second-rate roadside motel, but without a physical
wall in between them except for the connecting doors.
The challenge was
lighting each in a truly independent way, including taking into account where
shadows would (not) fall -- it wound up almost like lighting two separate
sets, even though they're mirror-image identical and not much changes during
the entirety of the two acts.
It was all about directionality, beam control
and subtle edge quality.
We referred to it as needing to "spray that whole centerline
with a wide swath of Beam-Stop(tm)" but not make it too obvious.
So one component was basically straight-on from the house and what amounts to the first electric, in a cool; the second major component was two diverging sets of warm to pick up just along the middle and fire outward to the sides. Warm along that path would vaguely hint at in-room light from the center table fixtures which of course weren't there later, but what of that. The front cool would reflect the daylight streaming in through the, uh, unusually large picture-windows that all of us, sitting outside the hotel building, would be watching the show through. A third direction of simple pinkish downlight rounded things out, emphasizing the beds -- pink to punch up all the pseudo-sex going on there, or whatever. So that's the aesthetic and the spatial limitations I was working with. The space owns a couple of moving lights, a collection of gobos, and some LED wash fixtures similar to my RokBoxes. I racked my brains for a while thinking how I might use any of that stuff, but it just wasn't appropriate for what this show needed. We even took down a couple of old I-Cue units to make room for where I needed normal fixtures. Except for a couple of LEDs used for effects later, it was just all straightforward ellipsoidals and fresnels and bog-standard gel colors, albeit with very picky tweaks to shutters and focus. |
The shop becomes part of the backstage for show runs; these props tables hinge down to sit flat when needed, and are otherwise fastened up out of the way. |
I finally got to sit down with the stage manager and go through my
proposed cue-points, which I'd marked for rapid access in the script.
Here I noted that we had different philosophies regarding how to run
lighting for a show.
She wanted *everything* in the cue stack, from house-open to shutdown,
and leave nothing to manual control.
Usually I have house-lights on a sub someplace for independent control,
run most of what I need off scene combinations, and if I do a cue stack
at all it's usually to keep track of base flow or help with making
something complex more consistent.
But she had a point -- I was going to hand all this off to someone who
hadn't seen the development of the run, so it made sense to have it all as
canned as possible and referenced by number and go-button presses.
She added it all to her run script and I went back upstairs, banged
it all into the board, and made sure it would come up on page 1 when
everything got powered up.
The only exception was the gunshot flash -- the Express 250 was too *slow* to run a follow snap-out cue even set at 0.1 second, so instead that had to be a fast tap on a bump-button almost like typing on a keyboard. Those LEDs would probably be full-on for all of one or two DMX cycles, but it was enough. |
Show shots
Officer Sheridan, working undercover, "been up for hours" and clearly ready for duty. Not. |
"Donut?
I think I got enough to last us the morning..." |
Simultaneous wrestling in both rooms, with very different intent and dialogue. |
"I sha' play fur ye a bonny sang ay mah homelain ..." |
The |
Billie hiding in plain sight |
"Pit 'er in thaur..." |
A tender moment of reflection on bagpipe dysfunction |
Billie in the air, headed for the closet again |
"He's alive, he's just unconscious." |
"...what I should do with a sixteen million dollar check?"
And the crowd watching in the next room goes wild... |
Graciously helping the Mayor's wife over the bed, and then instantly back to the standoff |
The Tallahassee Flip! |
Bows.
Here, one more light came on to help break the "fifth wall" darkness and light the cast all the way across. |
The show ran for two weekends, and everyone seemed to be wishing that the
run was longer because of all the work that everyone had put into it!
But even just six or seven runs with a real audience is quite a strain on
actors and run-crew.
What was really interesting for me was to see how much the actors' delivery
of the show evolved between rehearsals I watched and the last show, which
I attended just as audience.
Hard to describe -- it felt like they were more settled into the roles
and characters by the final night, but possibly hamming it up a bit more
as a side-effect of greater confidence. Dunno.
Anyway, it was still hilarious and brilliantly executed.
The lock-step of the "completely separate" dialogue between the two
rooms is one of the best aspects of the composition.
But all good things must eventually end, and the set itself was one of them. Because of the eight doors in very active use, it had to basically be framed up like a house, or maybe a hotel -- no wiggly walls here! It began life as big stacks of new 10-foot 2x4s and lauan sheets loaded into backstage, and took the tireless work of many to put together in a sufficiently robust fashion. Doors could freely slam and the rest of it basically wouldn't move at all. And now the whole thing had to be reduced back to lumber stock. |
And given all the rough stuff I'd been walking on over the last year-plus, I saw no point in having footwear for any of this. I realize that most people would view this as somewhere between heroic and utterly nuts, but really, drywall screws lying on a deck are on their sides, and the threads and little bugle-heads don't stick up enough to be a notable problem for a seasoned barefooter -- in fact it all feels rather entertaining to walk on. Stiff shoes are in fact more likely to roll out from under someone on these, where bare soles just mold to the shapes as needed and maintain secure floor grip. I am always more likely to tear up my hands on this kind of work than my feet, but I didn't have work gloves on either and only a couple of folks on the crew bothered with those. | |
Social brainwashing has made almost everyone forgo and forget the inherent toughness and capability of the human foot and our hardwired instinct to step carefully when needed, but a few of us enjoy being healthy living examples of the physical truth. As it says in my main index, all four hands in play working the gig, especially when up a ladder! My only obligatory shedding-of-blood on this show came early on, from my thumb, by a small upholstery staple sticking out of the back of a chair when I went to grab it and move it. I went and got pliers and pulled it out of the chair frame; problem solved. |