I feel like the emotional experience of working on the show and the experience of designing the lights for it are two completely separate things. Working on the show was amazing. I was on a team with amazing, amazing people. Our director brought me on to design, and she has been so great about communicating about the text, her vision, and keeping designers in the loop about everything that needs to happen. Our producer has been equally awesome. He made sure that everything happened during tech week and that everyone had their work done with reasonable deadlines. He helped me so much by facilitating my rental and my use of the space, and I truly appreciate all of the work he did over the past year. My master electrician really stepped up and helped me make sure that everything could happen. He was patient and calm and helpful when I was stressed about stuff and reassured me that I was doing fine when I felt like I had made stupid choices. Finally, I'm going to give a shout out to our stage manager, who had the difficult task of keeping everything in line so the show can run. She's done an amazing job with accommodating the needs of the actors and the needs of the designers and making everything happen. I could go on with how awesome each person is one by one, but these were the big four for me, and I would be remiss if I did not write about them specifically.
My tech week was interesting. In my electrician brain, it was spectacular: eleven lights, two multi cables, hang, cable, and patch done by noon and focus by 4:30. All cable neat and tidy on the booms and on the ground, and every light turned on. Great. Then I had to switch to designer brain, and that was a harder, less happy place for me to be.
First of all, I have to say that this show and design were a huge learning experience for me. It is the first time that I have had full control of everything to do with the lights from start to finish, and that's a lot more responsibility than I'm used to. I made the plot myself, made all the choices about placement, instrument, color, cable, what to order, arranging to get it, etc. by myself. I had help with the execution, but the planning was all on me. When it came to writing cues, I was given two moments from the director and the instruction to make their faces visible, and the rest was on me.
By the time the cast was rehearsing on Monday night, my inexperience in making these planning choices was painfully evident.
Good things first: I really like my use of side light on the Judge. It works and I'm proud of it. I successfully created a look for each scene and a distinct look for each location. The actors can be seen. My cues are appropriate for the text and the blocking, so nothing looks like I made it stupid beyond the mistakes of my plot. I better understood my mastery of being an electrician and Ion syntax. Actually, this mechanical understanding of lights is really important to me and my way of thinking about lighting, so working with that was a great place to start. It also helped that I knew how to handle a corroded pin on the lamp in one of my instruments.
Now for the less good things: I did not choose to place my hanging structure in a good place, and I probably did not choose the correct instruments for the position I was using. When we were making our first pass at focus, I realized that my front light angle was far too steep for the actors standing downstage. If they walk too close to the edge of the stage, they fall into darkness. There is also a great deal of unevenness between the lighting areas that I see every time an actor crosses, and it drives me crazy. Next time, I won't put the lights so close to the stage (even if it's the easy place to put them), and I'll make sure that I can focus them in such a way that there is better coverage and evenness across the stage. It's really bothering me when I see dark spots, and I'm not sure if anybody else is seeing it, but it makes me feel like I messed up.
Now for the less good things: I did not choose to place my hanging structure in a good place, and I probably did not choose the correct instruments for the position I was using. When we were making our first pass at focus, I realized that my front light angle was far too steep for the actors standing downstage. If they walk too close to the edge of the stage, they fall into darkness. There is also a great deal of unevenness between the lighting areas that I see every time an actor crosses, and it drives me crazy. Next time, I won't put the lights so close to the stage (even if it's the easy place to put them), and I'll make sure that I can focus them in such a way that there is better coverage and evenness across the stage. It's really bothering me when I see dark spots, and I'm not sure if anybody else is seeing it, but it makes me feel like I messed up.
The emotional experience of watching my design play out has been interesting for me to analyze. I'm usually a competent person and I can take a compliment when I think I deserve it. I've been getting positive feedback from my team, but I don't think I deserve it because whenever I watch a run, all I can see are the things that I made wrong with my plot (the dark spots, shadows, bad angles, etc.) that I don't have the ability to fix. I wish I had done better. I have this weird combined feeling of ownership of the design and wanting people to see it because it's decent coupled with a sort of embarrassment at the things I deem bad about it. I'm having trouble seeing the things I did well, and it's making me really insecure because the word "good" is the least helpful note I can get. I guess I'm satisfied but not necessarily fully proud of it. I am proud of what I learned from it, and I'm happy I did it, but the thing I struggle with is that the final product does not make apparent the things that I've learned.
I'm not usually an insecure or self-deprecating person, and looking over this post, I realized that the paragraphs I wrote about my mistakes and dissatisfactions are very detailed while the one on what went well is very short. I think that I'm struggling with knowing that my design is not perfect and I want to explain that I know what is wrong with it and why to maintain my self-perception as a competent person. When I named my feelings about the design as "insecurity," it made it easier to deal with my uncertainties because the feelings of iffiness had a name.
All in all, the experience of designing Romance has been amazing. I was part of the most wonderful team of collaborators, and I could not have wished for a better process to be my first time calling all the shots. I may be insecure about the final product of my work, but my director is happy with it, and that is all I can ask for. In the final four performances, I hope to relax and be okay with the work I've done and let go of my perfectionism and insecurity. I know what I did and what I learned, and that is a great place to be at the end of this process.
Today is awesome because my show had an amazing opening performance!
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