This is a class exercise I developed in a conversation with Eric Cornwell. The class; designers, directors, actors, dancers, is taking place in a theatre with an existing focused Rep Plot with no color. There are many choices of angle of light and dimmers controlling them. The class all have a magic sheet that they can use to make choices and cues.
The question before the class is: Does Lighting Communicate Emotion?
We put a pile of miscellaneous chairs on the stage in the middle, SR of CC; some piled on top, some laying down. The task of each student is to make 2 cues, one which makes the chairs look Sad and another which makes the chairs look HAPPY. Don’t tell the class which is which, let them guess. Usually the chairs are lit dramatically with high shafts or low streaks making strong highlights and deep shadows, and everyone agrees that those chairs are SAD and the second cue usually involves making them bright and cheerful by bringing up the Front Lights. HAPPY.
Then I show them (if no one figured this out) that another solution is to use only the Front Lights but very dim, 18%, and suddenly they are the SADdest chairs you ever saw; the party is over, the bar is closed. Don’t forget that in this exercise there is no color; only Angle and Intensity is being used.
Now that we have all experienced some sense of emotion being conveyed, we go on to the next part. We replace the chairs on the stage with an equivalent pile of rehearsal cubes, the anonymous usually bland painted wooden cubes used in rehearsal before you have real prop furniture. We pick a pair of cues that were generally agreed upon as having clearly expressed SAD and HAPPY and now look at these cues on the stage. We get no emotion at all. We have only sculptural objects lit in 2 different ways. Why?? It’s the pile of chairs that have given us the human emotion not the light. This is very important to experience. It means that the emotion must be on the stage; in the play, through the players, in the Choreography, in the Direction. The light can emphasize, underline, help convey the emotion as long as it is there. Light cannot create it.
