Performing Community: Party Lights

One idea that changed and developed significantly throughout our lighting design process was the party lights. We worked closely with our performance group and as such needed to develop our lighting ideas as their performance developed. Working as the lighting design team shone a light on the need to be flexible when devising with a team without being present for the whole process.

Initially our performance group came to us with a performance draft and lighting ideas of their own. For one scene at McDonalds they wanted it to feel like a party, and had envisioned many different multi-coloured lights flashing on and off. We explained that due to the practical constraints we would be unable to do that, but then discussed how we could achieve this party effect within the constraints, with options such as strobe effects.

A few weeks later our performance group returned with a performance that had changed significantly, and their needs for that scene had also changed. The scene was now shorter, not at McDonalds, more stylised, and the atmosphere was less party and more chaotic. Therefore, we were no longer trying to create a party, but rather to enhance the chaos onstage, and chose to use a single light with a multi-coloured gel to create this effect. We focussed on the lighting aspects of Atmosphere and Illumination over the aspects of Sculpture and Selectivity. In this scene, and indeed throughout the performance, the actors worked as a group to create a whole through movement, and so our ‘selection’ was the whole stage to light all of them, and it was more important to give the atmosphere of chaos than to attempt to sculpt the actors with the lights we had available.