Week 5: Under the Lights

I spent the majority of this past week under lights. As a cast member of Ferris Wheel in the week 5 one acts, I got a chance to experience stage lighting from the other side of design. From what I hear from so many people, the lighting in our show was awesome--So GREAT job Keli!! On my end, I couldn't necessarily see the whole picture, but I felt it, which was cool. 

One thing I found interesting was noticing how light affected me in my scene. In the tech process, there were times when I noticed that perhaps my face and Robert's face was missing some light. Of course Keli adjusted that. Another thing was that I definitely felt the hot spot, and when new lights would come up. So that was cool! As my scene ended and the next began, I was able to look on to see the lights in the following scenes. In Great To See You, I was glad to see how the emotional shifts of the scene were accompanied by shifts in light-especially since it all took place in one location. I didn't have much ability to see all the lighting in A Second of Pleasure, but I did see that last key stroke that Keli used--the isolated window gobo when Jacob was left alone on stage. This was extremely successful in highlighting both the emotional aspect of the moment, as well as putting a good button on the whole show all together. 

Now the picture to the left is a different designer-Stacie Marie O'Hara. She designed Angels in America, and did an amazing job. There are a few things that definitely resonated with me that I can still see very clearly. The first statement she made that really stuck with me was her Antarctica scene. The lighting in this scene was so cool (as in temp) and dreamlike-very fitting for the scene taking place. Her use of down blue was extremely captivating, especially when the scene ended and the two characters were behind the pillars in a pool of down blue. Another lighting stroke I liked was when the mormon character (sorry forgot his name) was making a drunken phone call to his mom. He was cast in down light as well, and it created so many interesting shadows on his figure. I understood the emotion and darkness behind this choice. I was also really impressed that even though all the lights were exposed, they didn't draw attention.  I mean I noticed them, but they flowed so well that they did not take attention away from the scenes. One last thing- the way this was staged was incredibly strange, and Stacie handled the split scenes very well despite that. Oh and also, her "fluorescent" lighting that wasn't really fluorescent worked really well too!! I was convinced I didn't even realize that it wasn't fluorescent light. 

That's it for my late post! Until this SUNDAY.

-Erika