Friday, October 23, 2009

My First College Lighting Design

When I returned to college for my sophomore year I was eager to get back to work on more plays and dance concerts.
In November of 1975 I would design the lighting for my first play in college, actually two one acts.
The plays were Douglas Turner Ward’s Day of Absence and Happy Ending.
Day of Absence was unusual in that all of the actors were Black and played their parts in White Face.

Back in 1975 African-Americans still called themselves Black, and my use of the term is to fit my tales into the proper period vernacular and for clarity sake.

The Black actors were all playing the Whites in a town where all of the Blacks disappeared one day and nothing gets done and everyone panics.
I am not sure how it would play today but it worked back then.
At the time it did not seem to me, a White kid from Long Island, that working on plays with African-American themes and mixed raced was unusual, special, or that we were trying to educate the audience, but I guess we did.

Just last week while looking for something else I found a copy of the light I drew for the two plays 35 years ago.
The light plot has 42 stage lights for both plays.
It was on this show that I used my first moving light, although it was not planed.
After one performance a friend told me that they enjoyed my lighting of the play and especially liked the sunset.
I thanked him but I had no idea what he was talking about.
It seems that the light that I had focused on the window was loose and slowly moved down during the play giving a very nice sunset effect more then ten years before the first motion lights were available on the market.


While I was at UB we also did two plays by South African playwright Athol Fugard; The Blood Knot and Bosemen and Lena.
Because of the subject matter of his plays I had always assumed that he was a Black man.
Several years later at the University of Michigan I got to meet Mr. Fugard and was very surprised when I walked into the room and saw a gray-haired White man sitting there.
I felt like a fool and was glad that I had never said anything to anybody about my thinking he was Black.

I still had a lot to learn about Theatre and still do to this day.


Thursday, October 15, 2009

"Make it Pretty"

In the spring of my freshmen year of college I took my first Stage Lighting course.
The class was good and covered all of the basics, Nuts to Bolts or maybe that should be Amps to Volts.
I remember one class demonstration turned into both a funny episode and good learning moment for me.
Working with several lights and colored gels in the classroom, our teacher was showing us what colors worked well together and how they would look.
We looked at several combinations of colors when the teacher said that ambers do not work well on black actors.
Having an African-American in the class he was asked if he would stand in the light.
When the amber gel was put on him he looked great, the color worked well on him and everyone laughed.

What I learned from that class was not to assume anything, but test it for yourself.
Rules and conventions are a good starting place but I have always found that I will do what it takes to make it look right.
Many times over the years I have used the wrong type of light, hung in the wrong place, removed a lens or made my own mixed color gels by cutting and taping them together to get the desired result.

Jumping ahead a number of years, when I was in grad school at the University of Michigan there was a talented undergraduate lighting student from Canada who took classes with the grad students.
During one summer took the small three light mixing box home for the summer.
The unit had three “Inkies”, 3 inch fresnels, and dimmers mounted on a box that contain samples of all the gel colors.
He spent the summer looking at all the hundreds of various combinations of colors and wrote down in a notebook his thoughts on what he saw.

I must admit that some of us laughed at him when he came back in the fall.
Timothy Hunter got into the Yale School of Drama, worked in Europe for a while and designed the lighting for Smokey Joe’s CafĂ© on Broadway.
His hard work, plus talent, did pay off as he is the Interim Department Head, Professor of Lighting & Stage Design at the University of Connecticut and also has his own production company.
http://www.timhunterdesign.com/

The summer after my first year of college I went home, armed with one year of college and one class in stage lighting I took on the responsibility of designing lights for the Sayville Musical Workshop’s production of No, No, Nanette.
I was ready when I met with the director to discus the lighting for the musical.

The four controllable qualities of light: Intensity, Distribution, Color and Form
The Four Functions of Stage Lighting: Visibility, Composition, Form and Mood.

I knew my lighting basics, had read the play, I am ready here I come!!!
I met the director and all he said to me was “Make it pretty”.
Make it Pretty, MAKE  IT  PRETTY! ! !
Where was that in the lighting text book?
I am an artist, how dare he . . . .
So I made it "Pretty” and had fun doing it.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Successful Classmates from SUNY Buffalo


At the time I was in school I had no idea of the success that many of my classmates would have.
During my first year at UB I would work with Alan Adelman, Mitchell Bogard and Ken Tabachnick.
Later I would work with Anne Militello.
Some of Alan Adelman’s work can be on various PBS shows such as Great Performances, Dance in America, American Playhouse and Live from Lincoln Center.
Mitchell Bogard has done a good deal of television lighting for such show as Live From Lincoln Center, Rachael Ray, The Chris Rock, Madonna: Exposed and early on he even worked on Sesame Street.
Ken Tabachnick has worked with The Kirov Opera and Ballet, the Bolshoi Opera and Ballet, the Paris Opera Ballet, the New York City Ballet, the Lyon Opera Ballet, the Martha Graham Dance Company, and The Trisha Brown Company.
Anne Militello has designed on Broadway and many other places both on and off stage.

I will often catch one of their names when I watch any stage production that has been filmed for TV.

Another classmate was Tylor Wymer who worked years for Disney before starting his own special effects company. (I wonder if he still has the T-Square he borrowed from me?)

Jerry Kegler is the facilities director for the Center for the Arts at UB.
http://www.ubcfa.org/home.aspx

Actors?
I have not yet talked about them.
Yes even some of the actors went on to work on the business.
Tommy Koenig has worked all over the country as a stand up comedian and has appeared in several movies including: Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Dracula Dead and Loving it, and Stitches.

Unfortunately too many of my classmates fell victim to the Aids epidemic of the early 1980’s.
We lost too many talented people.

I know that several others of my classmates also went on to work in theatre, some teaching, some working behind the scenes but all having fun.
There are many others from my days at UB still working in Theatre that I have just lost touch with, but every once and a while I will hear from them.
I just heard from I friend that I was out of touch with for a few years because of this Blog.
It is hard for me to believe that my Blog is important enough to have the content listed by Google.

But it was nice to hear from Barry Besmanoff who still works for LiteLab Corporation, whose product line has changed a bit since they made the Disco Light Floor for the movie Saturday Night Fever.
I always tell my students that someday when they are out there working in Theatre that some of their current classmates will be out there too.
Their friends and former classmates can become people that they can count on to work with.
I have had calls former students who are now running Theatres and they ask me about another Brockport grad whose resume they have received.

Theatre is a small world.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Work Hard - Play Hard


Even as I started to work on the set for my first play in college I was not yet sure if Theatre was going to be my career.
I knew I loved working on plays, building and painting sets, working on the lighting and sound, but I did not know if I had what it would take to become a professional.
I did not take long for me to realize that I was doing what I loved and I was working with other students who were just like me and that this is what I wanted to do.
I still had a lot to learn but it was challenging and fun at the same time.
After working on the first play I would work on three dance concerts in a row.
I would help hang and focus the lights as well as run the two-scene preset control board.

When I left for school at the end of the summer I had no idea what I was getting into, but just after a few months and several productions I was hooked.
I worked on many more productions then I was required to for class.
I often would return to the dorm late after rehearsals and performances and missed a few parties but there was still plenty of time to engage in what to many college students is the most important thing about college: Drinking.
I always had a core of non-theatre friends to hang and party with, but I soon spent more time working and partying with my fellow theatre students.

Back in 1974 the drinking age was still 18 and bars closed at 4am in Buffalo.
There was always time after a show to get a drink or two.
I enjoyed going to the student club because it had the one thing that college guys liked more than drinking: Girls.
I liked dancing in the club, but within a few years the music shifted from Doobie Brothers to Disco and I enjoyed it a bit less.

I do remember this one girl who lived near me in the dorm who I always liked to dance with.
I remember her for a number of things, she was nice, good looking and had two different color eyes; one green, one blue.
She would soon transfer to another school and I lost my favorite dance partner.
A year or so later while I was visiting my brother at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn this very same girls walked out of the dorm room next to his.
Small world.

I found early on that Theatre was a lot of hard work when done right, but also I found that everyone would party just as hard when the work was over.
Nothing tastes as good as that first beer after you have been working in the Theatre for twelve hours or more building, painting or running a show.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Putting My New Hammer to Use

While at SUNY Buffalo, UB, I worked on many plays: some classics, some modern works, some original works and some just too odd to categorize.
Over my fours years at UB I also worked on at least five or six dance concerts.
During my first semester I put my new hammer to work right away on the set for The Misanthrope.
That first semester I also got to work on three dance concerts and another play or two.
We were always very busy at UB working in both of the theatres at the same time.

By my second semester I moved up from being just a general technical assistant to become the master carpenter and master electrician for a number of the productions.
I have put together a list of some of the plays that I worked on while at UB.
I know that I worked on a few others, but these are ones that I still have the program for.
On many of the unlisted plays I served as a general technical assistant, working a day or two just to get the show finished or striking the set.

Here is a list of most of plays that I worked on while at UB from 1974 until 1978:
The Misanthrope
Baal
Apple Pie
Bride of Shakespeare Heaven
A View From the Bridge
The Good Woman of Setzuan
Ronnie Bwana, Jungle Guide
Day of Absence and Happy Ending
The Alley Between Our Two Houses
From the Memoirs of Pontius Pilate
Old Times
The Bacchae
Les Blancs
Trouble in Mind
6 Characters in Search of an Author
Serenading Louie

A Few Titles from the “Unlisted” List of Plays:
Naked Lunch
Bozeman and Lena
Loves Labor Lost
The Blood Knot
Old Timers Sexual Symphony and Other Notes












Thursday, October 1, 2009

My Hammer: Photo

Been busy working on my next play that opens a week from tommorow.
It is my 253rd or 315th or so production depending on how you count.
Took a minute in the crazy work day to take a photo of "The Hammer".
It has no name, but you can see it is well used.
Maybe I will take the time to clean it up a bit, will post photos when I do.















The next play is Don't Dress for Dinner
Here is a link to the current season:
http://www.brockport.edu/theatre/current.html

I'll write more once the play opens.