This remounting of “No No Boy” toured to Washington, D.C. and turned into an extremely interesting show. Here’s what happened.
In the time before the start of the tour, my lighting designer, who was supposed to go with us to do the lights, disappeared. By the time he reappeared we were about to depart, and he was in no shape to go on the tour. He had had appendicitis, had an operation, and was still on painkillers, so we went without him.
The lights were going to be whatever we could get at the theatre. The theatre had said that they had “minimal equipment.” Our light guy had dealt with the theatre, and wasn’t with us, so we went down there blind, as it were. When we got there I found that the “theatre” was actually a lecture hall, and the minimal equipment was actually no equipment, only the general lighting for the hall, with three spotlights that were not movable, and a big screen for presentations and videos, etc., that was the upstage wall.
I had always said that we could do this play without lights, what with the staging and the actors always front and center, so I told the cast and the stage manager that that was what we were going to do. A semi-circle of chairs upstage for the actors to sit on through the play was all the set we had.
I had all the lights on the stage area on, and the house lights on as well, from the start. Audience comes in, everything is lit, such as it was, then the actors come in, with their props and costume pieces and set them on and around their chairs. The house lights start to go out, and when all the actors are sitting, the first sound cue comes in and the play begins. I cut the intermission so the play played straight through to the end. At the end the cast is dancing to lively dance music, then they form a line downstage, take their bows, and exit. House lights up.
No light cues, the house lights were done visually. Loved it, and so did the audiences. I don’t think they noticed the lack of light cues in the production. When we got back to New York and ran in the original space with this version of the show, I had the light designer, who was recovered from the appendicitis operation, make the lights look like the lecture hall lights in D.C. so we could do the show like it had been done there, no light cues. He got what I wanted. The most theatrical lighting I’ve ever had in a show. Oh, the irony.
