{"id":8682,"date":"2020-11-25T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-25T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8682"},"modified":"2020-12-07T09:25:24","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T14:25:24","slug":"lighting-and-sound-theater-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8682","title":{"rendered":"Lighting and Sound: Theater Magic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Like everything else in theater, there\u2019s much more to lighting and sound design than their obvious purpose of making on-stage action visible and audible. Through means bold and subtle, they enhance our experience and understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lighting Design<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lighting signals us where to look and who\u2019s the current character of interest, not necessarily the speaker. The type of lighting used (harsh or flattering, bright or muted) further reveals something about the time and place where a scene occurs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the last class in my \u201chow to watch a play course,\u201d we watched Pipeline<\/em> by Dominique Morisseau, as produced by the Lincoln Center Theater. The stage was bare, each scene defined by only a few pieces of furniture, and the lighting did much to reinforce each setting. In the high school scenes, cold, bright light mimicked fluorescents; in the teacher\u2019s home, the light was warm, subdued, and her son\u2019s white shirt glowed in the dimness. While we might not consciously notice this difference, we would definitely perceive it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lighting can create a mood and reinforce a production\u2019s style. The fuchsia lighting of the dance scene in She Loves Me<\/em> was not \u201crealistic\u201d\u2014nor was the dance\u2014but everything worked together to convey the sense of watching a confection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smaller effects are also important\u2014the light through a window reflected on the wall, the change in daylight from morning to night, the use of \u201cpractical lights\u201d like lamps, flashlights, or the light inside a refrigerator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These days, the myriad light cues in a production are computerized and programmable. If a theater is outfitted with colored LED lights, even the desired color can be specified for the computer, though old-fashioned plastic \u201cgels\u201d are still in use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sound Design<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like lighting, sounds help establish time and place (crickets chirping, a clock chiming, sirens). They can be random or diegetic<\/a>, if, in the world of the play, the actors know about and respond to them, like a ringing doorbell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sounds reinforce the reality of a scene, like a car door slamming or the splash of water from a faucet. Such sounds may be easily overlooked, if only because they fully meet our expectations of what a slamming car door or running water should sound like. Adam Immerwahr, artistic director of Theater J<\/a> in Washington, D.C., who led the course, said that, to create the multilayered sound we hear as \u201crain,\u201d it takes a combination of at least three separate recordings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Underscoring, or background music, playing softly under dialog, is not heard by the actors and contributes to mood. Sometimes incidental music ramps up between scenes, as it did in Pipeline<\/em>, holding our attention while sets or costumes are changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pipeline<\/em> included some deceptively simple sounds. The teacher\u2019s lounge scenes had a public address speaker, which produced the kind of slightly garbled, staticky announcements we remember from high school. The hospital scene also included public address announcements, but they obviously were the product of a high-end system. A tiny but telling detail and a deliberate choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like everything else in theater, there\u2019s much more to lighting and sound design than their obvious purpose of making on-stage action visible and audible. Through means bold and subtle, they enhance our experience and understanding. Lighting Design Lighting signals us … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Lighting and Sound: Theater Magic So much more than making sure you can see and hear what's going on.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[366,104,147],"tags":[1780],"class_list":["post-8682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drama","category-the-morgue","category-theater","tag-sound-design"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2g2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8684,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8682\/revisions\/8684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}