The critics only notice if you fuck up. Hey you! I’m talking to you, sitting there, 5th row center,and you in the left balcony. Pay attention. Have you read a hundred theatre reviews? Did they comment on the light?
They praise the actor, her dazzling sail across the stage, her exquisite cheekbones, the clarity of her gesture, the emotional range of her face. Nothing about the shadings of light sculpturing those cheekbones, the placing of light on face that makes the scene sad or mad or gloriously glad. Would you like the players to act in the dark, stumble, shout out their lines into empty unlit space?
100 separate light cues for each beat, each one painstakingly drawn, static and moving lights positioned, gelled, tracked, cues transferred one by one to the computer program that triggers the timing, tested for days as the actors work through the play beat by beat—heated discussion between director, stage manager, set designer, and me who has studied the play in depth and designed a light script that will pull out meaning at a level almost subliminal.
You don’t even know what you’re looking at. And you don’t know because the reviewers know hardly more than you. English majors. They write about the story, the characters, the narrative arc, maybe the language if it’s Shakespeare. They discuss the director, nod to the playwright, in a musical to the songs and choreography. Let me throw in here that it is both delicious and demanding as hell to design for dance—your light is so clearly a partner in the dance. Everyone can see it.
Back to the theatre reviewers who tell you what you saw while leaving out so much. Set and costumes might get a sentence but no mention of how the set and the costumes are lit, subtly, for maximum emotional impact. The lighting contributed to the atmosphere of the play is the generic bland gag-inducing comment in 90% of the theatre reviews I’ve read, searching in vain for some recognition. Thank god I like my art for itself.
But you–you deserve more. You’re being kept in the dark. You need to know what to look at, how to use your eyes.
Demand an education in light. It’s your right.