2007 Aug 09 - Thu
Lighting Assistant at Bermuda Musical & Dramatic Society
Since the beginning of the year, I've been helping out with Lighting Design with the
Bermuda Musical & Dramatic Society at the
Daylesford Cinema on Dundonald Street in Hamilton.
The first production was a straight forward, almost as simple as white lights on-white
lights off, lighting
requirement for Sordid Lives (A Black
Comedy about White Trash). The lead lighting designer, Mary Brier, came down with pnemonia
just
prior to opening night. As such, I 'ran' the lights for the 10 nights the show was open.
No big deal. Press the 'go cue' button when called to do so by the stage manager.
Stage manger was Nicola Wilkinson, who was great to work with.
Next show up was a musical by the name of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. We had an off
island director by the name of Vivienne Elborne. For lights, Doug Parker, the lighting
designer on this one, took a different approach to lighting. For primary lighting, he ran
with a number of clusters of three lights each. Each cluster had red, green and blue
filters. As such, any color could be chosen for lighting the covered area, including white.
Because three separate lights were used, we had some interesting colored shadows as
artifacts. At first I thought it was a bad thing, but after a while, It seemed appropriate
for how the stage had been designed. We did use some fill in whites as well as some specials.
One of the specials was a white
light shining out of the crypt, with a smoke generator running, as a cue to Drood to come
out. It looked quite good.
Mary Brier was lead designer for the next production, Famous for 15 Minutes. This is a
production with six plays, each being fifteen minutes long. Lighting this production taxed
the inventory of lights and lighting channels. One of the more challenging plays of the
sequence was Bermuda Triangle, which is set on a sailboat about to encounter a hurricane.
This one required careful timing of lighting (lightning) and sound (thunder) queues. As the
storm approached, lightning and thunder became stronger and closer together. The play that
did win the Golden Inkpot was Grass is Greener. To simulate a light club we did a simple
two light special by shining an emerald and a purple spot on the back wall.
[/Personal/Lighting]
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