I worked on my schools production of the play Variations by Katie Hims as part of the Connections 2019 festival organised by the National Theatre. Our performance was chosen as one of 10 to be performed at the NT’s Dorfman theatre.
Home Performance
Our home performance was in the blackbox theatre at school. This space contains a lighting rig consisting of a variety of fixed, conventional fixtures - all controlled by 2 dimmer rack units. I used myDMX 3.0 as the DMX controller for this performance, as this is what I had available, and is relatively intutive to operate and program compared to the old Zero88 Aclara lighting desk in the space! Due to the ‘groundhog day’ nature of the play, the design consisted of a few repeated ‘presets’ which made up the many lighting cues:
- Modern Kitchen
- 80’s Kitchen
- Transition
This is the modern kitchen present. I was aiming to create the look of some morning sunlight entering through a window stage left. I also used general ambient wash so the audience could see the actors from all the angles in the round.
National Theatre Performance
When moving the show to the National, I worked with their lighting designer and programmer to recreate the cues and looks within our version of the play and expanded upon the core ideas I had used originally, with the addition of the Dorfman’s much more capable and powerful lighting rig. The most striking difference between the rig at the home performance and in the theare, was the inclusion of colour changing sidelighting booms which we’re used during the transition scenes.
More detail to be added later…