Week 5: As I Liked It

Unfortunately, I couldn't make it to see Kyle's designs in performance this week, but I did get to see the closing performance of As You Like It today. Having been there for part of tech, and having had Darrin explain much of his plot to me when I went to observe, I was able to better appreciate the ways that the light complimented the production.

Simplistic as it may sound, there was a moment shortly into the show where I made the conscious effort to look up and see what was being used - there were a lot of lights up there (my kind of show). I meant to ask Brady how many were hung for the show, but sadly forgot. I particularly noticed the lighting in the transition to the swamp there was a par that was cutting through the mist/smoke - a very powerful brushstroke.

Thinking about it afterwards, there was a lot of light - being a show largely set outdoors, the sunlight went a long way towards keeping the realism of the environment consistent. It's not that the lighting in those instances wasn't notable, but rather that I accepted it as a fact, as opposed to reacting in the same way I did to the firefly lights when I saw them for the first time. I wouldn't have noticed all those lights had I not been looking for them (or just looked up), because at no point did they feel anything but appropriate. It didn't hurt that they contributed to a little swampy warmth, either (although not as much as on the tech day, thankfully).

I also started thinking about gobos in a more subtle sense, as well as the more blatant leafy/window/statement patterns I'd thought about in the past. In the court, especially, there seemed to be subtle bar gobos that were a constant reminder of the restriction of the city. By contrast, the swamp's freedom felt even more unrestrained.

And now I go back to my conceptual magic sheet, because colored boxes are my friend. And then, after that, to make those boxes a reality.