The effect that lighting can create within a performance and total theatre

 Within today’s rehearsals and devising sessions we looked at how the lighting would be useful and effective within our immersive pieces. We blacked out the room so that the only lighting we could see was the one we purposely set. We watched all the other performances from the other groups including ours with the lighting and darkness. I can honestly say that I think the lighting was very effective and successful within each individual group performance. From an audiences perspective with the main lights off and only a couple of specific lights on you could hardly see the actor’s faces as they were blacked out. This definitely affected me personally as it impacted and influenced my illusion on the performances. Just from the blacked out faces I definitely felt an evil and monstrous presence on stage and that was just all through lighting.

I thought the lighting looked very fascinating from an audience’s perspective as it made the piece look more effective with some of the characters .I thought the front and back lighting really worked well with effecting individual characters and performances. From an audiences perspective you can see from the front and back lighting massive and gigantic shadows emerging from the floor and walls. I believe this looks really theatrical as it impacts the characters and performances in highlighting the presence of evil or good from that certain character on stage.

 

 

I believe that the lighting can have important effect on individual characters as well depending how the lighting is shown on that character within the scene. With the picture above you can see Lucy in the chair and the light is shining on her. I believe this will look very effective as it will highlight and emphasise the importance from that character in that scene.

 As our theatre performance is going to be immersive theatre I thought it would be a good idea to have more lighting on different group performances at a certain time. This will then signal the actors to either get louder or quieter depending on who has the most light on their individual group performances. If you haven’t got that much light shining on your scene then that would signal to the actors that you have to be quieter. Whereas if another group performance had a lot of light shining on their scene then that will signal to the actors to get louder.

When we watched these group performances the physicality from each actor was very creative and imaginative. As we are doing Tolkien’s fantasy world of ‘The Lord Of The Rings’ you could easily see the physical reference from actors trying to physicalize goblins and orcs. I thought they were very well portrayed as I started visually imagining these horrific creatures coming to life. They looked very interesting and effective towards that group’s performance.

Within today’s devising sessions we got familiar with the alphabetical box exercise we did at the start of the term. Again we had to spell our name from the different angles of the alphabetical box while adding tempo, effort and caution to our movements. While we are undergoing the alphabetical box exercise Tolkien and C.S Lewis will be discussing the stories the invented.

During today’s devising/experimental session we created a scene where Tolkien and C.S Lewis are at a pub that a group of writers go to and they talk about their individual stories and fantasy worlds they have created. We decided to base our scene around the quote from peter Brook who said “a man walks into an empty space, there is your beginning”. This basically gave us the idea of our setting as, we only have 2 chairs and an open space for Tolkien and C.S Lewis. The only things we as audience members were able to see was the chairs and shadows which made the piece look very theatrical. Then while they are talking about each other’s fantasy worlds (The Lord of the Rings/Lion Witch and the Wardrobe) they created the rest of the actors start performing their own individual alphabetical box. We decided that within our performance this was going to be the beginning of the show.

When rehearsing this scene it felt very ritualistic, enchant and sacred it was like something is happening all over again. It also felt very cathartic as it allowed you as an audience member to psychologically engage with the scene through the open expression of strong emotion. I thought that this scene definitely worked as I liked the simplicity of the piece being very calm and simply but then having so many meaning towards the piece like, the importance of both characters and the contrast between both fantasy worlds they created.  Once again the lighting had an impact on this piece as I imagined the lighting being the gate way into entering the fantasy world. Therefore, the lighting allows you to include more interpretations into the piece. Again linking back to the simplicity of there just being silence for about a minute was very effective as it highlighted the importance towards the rest of the performance. As both characters enter the stage in a very slow tempo, as an audience member you can feel the importance of each character as they have effected and influenced our performance pieces. I thought the piece looked really beautiful as there were just two chairs in an empty space and we managed to create a scene from just that setting.

 

During today’s rehearsal we spent a lot of time cutting and adding bits from our group performance. We have decided to take out most of the dialogue as it will allow the piece to look more theatrical and effective. I believe this will allow the audience to focus more on the characters and less on the dialogue within the scene.  We have also included important things towards our characters such as giving them a purpose in doing something, even something simple like walking. We as a group have also decided to include a lift when Lillian is giving birth and I believe it looks very spontaneous and neat when doing the lift.

Total theatre is where some practitioners and directors believe that all the elements within a theatre should be considered equally important. These things vary throughout the whole theatre as they could be things such as sound, lighting, visuals, movement, text etc.