Fundamentals of Lighting Design - Spring 2019
Photo Credit Mike Scott Photography
I’m a little amazed that we were able to make this happen...
I just finished teaching a 10-week course, (once a week), in Fundamentals of Lighting Design. It was an interesting experience, but a rewarding one.
At our theatre, The Stadium Theatre for the Performing Arts, in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, we have a lot of actors. We do not have a lot of technicians.
The Theatre itself is a 1,200 seat theatre, built in the 1920s. It is a Repertory Theatre with shows every weekend. There could be a comedy show on Thursday, a Tribute show on Friday, a different Tribute show on Saturday, and a Children’s show on Sunday. It is a very busy place.
Our Technical Staff consists of a Technical Director and a team of volunteers. Stage Managers, Directors, and Designers receive small stipends, but the rest of the team is volunteers.
In an effort to grow our group of trained technicians, we have begun offering classes in backstage work.
I decided to teach a class in Lighting Design. Six students signed up. The students were ages 15-37. They were High School students, twenty-somethings and a Dad of one of the young actors. Everyone had varying ranges of previous knowledge of working backstage, but only a few had any prior lighting experience.
Photo credit Chris Simpkins
The idea was to teach all of the basic Lighting techniques. We went over lighting positions, fixture types, color theory, the ‘why’, the ‘how’ and everything in-between. We even did a bit of programming training on an ETC Element lighting console.
The biggest hurdle in this process what finding time for the students to actually DO their designs. In community Theatre, there's not a lot of Tech time. Everyone has a Full-time job or goes to school, so finding open stage time is virtually impossible. Luckily, we made it work and each student took at least one musical number in the show and designed some beautiful looks.
A restaged picture...but represents the enthusiasm.
Everyone did an awesome job! I was very impressed with all of their work. However, I was most impressed with my Assistant, Amelia. She has worked with me for about 4 years on various shows. Most of the time she is running up in the ceiling to focus lights or going through the script and taking notes. We never had a lot of time to talk about the actual design process.
I gave her a challenge. Amelia’s musical number was the Brave Girl Dance. This number was not about a solo in a spotlight, it was all about the choreography of the group. She nailed it with beautiful color choices and great use of sidelight to model the dancers.
To me, it proves that the best way to learn in Theatre is to gain experience. helping out and volunteering gives you the chance to be dropped into the process and get hands-on experience.
Amelia will be doing her first full show this summer. My promise to her is that I will be her Assistant. Let’s see if I can be as good an assistant to her as she is to me.
Currently, the plan is to teach this class again in the Spring of 2020 for the Junior show. I’m excited to have new prospective designers and to see what my 2019 class is doing then...
