CTR
107
Stage Lighting in Canada
Edited by Harry Lane and Allan Watts
Editorial
Looking
for Enlightened Lighting
Ric Knowles investigates the discourses of lighting design, training
and practice in Canada.
Learning
to be Bold with Lighting
Andrea Lundy talks to Allan Watts about the relationship of lighting
to theatricality.
Notes
from a Maritime Kitchen Talk on Lighting
Atlantic Canada’s busiest lighting designer, Leigh Ann Vardy,
talks to Emmy Alcorn about communication, trust, taking risks and
her belief in a Maritime aesthetic.
Lighting
from Character
Drawing on conversations with former colleagues of the late Jeffrey
Dallas, director Duncan McIntosh celebrates the art, life and leadership
of a distinguished and innovative lighting designer who was born in
the United States but realized his vocation in Canada.
When
the Canvas Isn’t Blank
Reviewing a long career on the West Coast, Marsha Sibthorpe considers
the status of lighting designers in contemporary theatre practice
and the particular challenges that have faced women working in the
Canadian theatre industry. A dinnertime conversation with John Cooper.
Discipline
Makes Better Art
Michael J. Whitfield talks to Allan Watts about lighting opera and
repertory lighting in Canada and on the international stage.
Seeing
the Light
The sensual and organic integration of moving bodies and moving light
in the work of Montreal-based Axel Morgenthaler is explored by Ana
Cappeluto and Edward Little.
Lighting
Reflections
Phillip Silver reviews a life in the theatre, in conversation with
Allan Watts.
Lighting
in Miniature
How does one meet the challenges of lighting in small theatres, with
limited resources? Explorations of a familiar problem, by Tim Fort.
Lights
Up at the Registry Theatre
An introduction to an ambitious new community theatre that has prioritized
its lighting needs, by Judy Van Rhijn.
SCRIPT
The
Vic
Leanna Brodie’s powerful and compassionate play, a hit at Theatre
Passe Muraille in fall 2000.
VIEWS
AND REVIEWS
Reviewing
the Role of the Dance Critic in Toronto.
By KATHERINE CORNELL and NADINE SAXTON.
Adventures
in the London (Ontario) Underground: A review of The Adventures of
the Boneyard Man, an ongoing serial performance at 123 King Street,
London, Ontario
Reviewed by LIZ SNYDER
Angélique,
by Lorena Gale; The Hats of Mr. Zenobe, by Robert Astle; Still the
Night, by Theresa Tova
Reviewed by GILLIAN STOVEL
Editorial
The
Paradox of Stage Lighting in Canada: Sometimes So Transparent that
It’s Invisible1
Harry
Lane and Allan Watts
As
theatre historians tell us, our word “theatre” is rooted
in performance as a visual experience, deriving from the Greek “theatron,”
literally “a place where you see or behold.” And that emphasis
is continued in our only English word for a single member of an audience:
“spectator.” Since most of our theatre is performed in the
dark (either indoors or outdoors after nightfall), most of it would
be invisible without stage lighting, and yet stage lighting in Canada
suffers from a strange kind of disregard. The Canadian Opera Company’s
(COC) 2001–2002 subscription brochure provides a case in point.
The opening paragraphs, by General Director Richard Bradshaw, emphasize
the increasingly visual importance of contemporary opera: “Increasingly,
opera is exploring our heightened sense of visual acuity. What I’m
interested in … is work that engages you to the point where you
see with your ears and hear with your eyes” (2). As if to emphasize
his point, almost every page of the brochure is dominated by the image
(or partial image) of a face sculpted by dramatic key lighting. Paradoxically,
however, as the brochure lists its seven impressive-sounding productions
for 2001–2002, it follows a very Canadian (and perhaps international)
pattern of listing the composer, conductor, stage director, set and
costume designers and then the major singers. There is, of course,
no mention of lighting designers; their work is visible everywhere
in this brochure, but they remain unnamed and in the wings (or on
the grid).
The
COC is not alone in this regard. In the 2001 Stratford Festival Visitors
Guide, Artistic Director Richard Monette places no such emphasis on
the visual, though the brochure depends heavily on visual images that
naturally depend partly on lighting for their effectiveness. It too
lists authors, composers, directors, designers (for sets and costumes)
and leading actors but never mentions light, the overwhelming power
of which is evident on every page and which is clearly fundamental
in selling the theatre tickets, packages, meals, accommodations and
material goods that are advertised. Lighting “illuminates”
the various products that Stratford has to offer but remains “silent”
or – when it is effective – invisible.
As
several writers and interviewees suggest in this issue, lighting designers
are always in danger of being displaced in the hierarchies of production.
Not only are they usually invisible in the promotional materials of
theatres, they are omitted from the parts of the process where major
artistic decisions are taken. Because, generally speaking, they command
lower fees than are paid to set and costume designers, they tend to
design many more productions a year (some of the numbers cited in
this issue are staggering), and they therefore tend to arrive on the
scene quite late, like hired guns, as Marsha Sibthorpe puts it. Lighting
calls often happen late in the evening or at night, when the stage
isn’t “needed” for acting rehearsals. And all too often
the work of lighting is ignored by reviewers. Furthermore, as we have
discovered in the struggle to illustrate this issue, lighting is one
of the elements in production that remains notoriously difficult to
record. Too often the technology of photography cannot deal adequately
with stage lighting, and the lighting design is compromised so that
actors, costumes and sets may be photographed more efficiently. As
Michael Whitfield observes in an interview with Allan Watts, “When
a production is over, most of the other areas have something tangible
that they can hold onto, a costume, a prop, a sketch, a model….
I move through a production but leave no footprints.” Fortunately,
most of the photographs that do appear in this issue are exceptions
to that trend, and it may be significant that many were taken by the
lighting designers themselves.
While
one of the basic functions of lighting is to merely illuminate performers,
sets and costumes, it is of course rarely, if ever, neutral. It helps
to control where and how we look, sculpting the space and its contents.
It affects how we perceive a performance, both synchronically (how
a stage looks at a particular moment) and diachronically (how that
changes from moment to moment). It contributes to the “meanings”
we attach to what we see. And as Brecht argued in his poem “The
Lighting,” it affects the relationship between a show and its
audience:
Electrician
Give us light on our stage.
How can we disclose
We playwrights and actors
Images to the world in semi-darkness?
The sleepy twilight sends to sleep.
Yet we need our watchers wide awake.
Indeed we need them vigilant.
(Brecht 14)
Editing
this issue has been an informative process. We began selecting potential
contents with a fairly firm emphasis on the aesthetics of stage lighting,
but the process and the individuals we have worked with (and whose
experiences and opinions are recorded in these pages) have themselves
moved us much more towards an emphasis on lighting as a material practice
that occurs within a material context, in which budgets, rehearsal
time and equipment figure as importantly as aesthetic decisions. We
did plan to focus very clearly on the work of individual designers,
in a small way to make the reality of their work more visible. We
planned to have more designers writing about their own work but found
that the realities of working as a successful lighting designer in
Canada leave little time for writing. We have resorted to more interviews
than we had originally planned for this issue, in order to ensure
that their views become part of the issue.
Note
1. We wish to thank the following for their assistance
in assembling this issue: Reid Gilbert (Capilano College), Amy Gillingham
(Archives and Special Collections, University of Guelph Library),
Jenny Munday (Playwrights Atlantic Resource Centre), Michael Petrasek
(Playwrights Union of Canada) and Patricia Tersigni (University of
Guelph graduate journals assistant).
Works
Cited
Brecht, Bertolt. Poems on the Theatre. Trans. John Berger and Anna
Bostock. Lowestoft, UK: Scorpion, 1961.
Canadian Opera Company. Canadian Opera Company: Richard Bradshaw –
General Director: 2001–2001 Season (brochure). Toronto, Canadian
Opera Company, 2001.
Stratford Festival of Canada. Visitors Guide 2001. Stratford, ON:
Stratford Festival of Canada, 2001.
