Monday, September 04, 2023
Astera Dreams in the Park
LightSoundJournal.com: A Midsummer Night’s Dream – one of Shakespeare’s most enduring, timeless, and intricately cerebral comedies – is always a delight to light, and Singapore-based lighting designer Gabriel Chan relished this task for the 2023 Shakespeare in The Park (SITP) version of this magical and mischievous work.
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I found this article absolutely fascinating. I have worked in outdoor theater in my past and I have always appreciated the challenge it presents. Working with the elements of the outdoors to design functional shows can be difficult but in my opinion it is incredibly rewarding. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to see this show and this set in person. I love how this article took us inside the brain of the designers and walked us through how everything works. More specifically I thought the discussion about the lighting equipment was particularly interesting. I love hearing about technical equipment that can withstand the elements, such as rain. I think in the past design for outdoor theater had to be simplified because designers had to create things that could stay outdoors, however, I feel this has shifted more recently as new technology and creative solutions are being created and brought into the world of outdoor theater. I think this is a beautiful example of that.
The first thing that I noticed about this production is that it had very high lighting production value for being Shakespeare in a park. All of the times that I have seen SITP productions before they have had just front-lighting systems or have been performed during the day. Even in Shakespeare generally, I tend to see less sophisticated lighting. Seeing the production photos of this Shakespeare performance very much makes me rethink what it means to design and specifically light classical theater.
I also found the discussion of equipment in this article interesting. Normally when showcasing equipment an article focuses on the fancy moving lights or systems to light the performers, but this article focuses on the set lighting. I think many of the interesting new innovations in LEDs are effect lights like NYX bulbs and Titan tubes. These may not be super helpful for lighting up performers but they can be helpful to give life to the set or in some circumstances even be the set.
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