It’s amazing to me sometimes that I can find the inspiration for a design, either scenery, lighting or sound, from a place that you’d never expect, or from a moment you’d never expect. Oh, sure, I’ve had the normal moments of design inspiration from a conversation with the director or other designers. For example, the design for our school’s production of Sweeney Todd came from a conversation with my director, who said that his vision for the show was that it took place in the day room of an insane asylum, and then he proceeded to talk about how he used to do volunteer work at a prison and described the day room and it’s high, huge windows. I took that and ran with it, designing a set that used windows as it’s main architectural feature, and adding the liberal use of gobos (metal patterns that you put in lights to project said pattern on the scenery, for those unfamiliar with that term) that created the look of light coming in though the windows.
Note: See photo rotator at the top of this page for pictures of the set and lights from Sweeney Todd and Les Miserables.
Anyway, back to my point. That design came from a typical source. I don’t mean typical in a negative sense here, especially since that’s how collaboration should work amongst theatre artists. I just mean that it’s not unusual to be inspired by the vision of a director to create your design. Another, slightly less typical, but still standard source is other shows. I recall being in London in the summer of 2008 and seeing Wicked and The Lord of the Rings and being struck by the way the scenery for both shows broke the plane of the proscenium arch and worked it’s way into the house to create an environment throughout the theatre, not just onstage. That was the inspiration behind the scenery for our school’s production of Les Miserables. I brought the set out beyond the proscenium, and tried to create that environment. The inspiration for the lighting for that show came from a session at the Broadway Lighting Master Classes that I attended, when one of the designers presenting said three words that slightly altered my approach to lighting: “Light the space.” So I did.
So as I sat yesterday morning listening to award-winning lighting designer Jennifer Tipton speak at the conference, I found myself staring at the truss that was over the stage and pondering it. Not to say that Ms. Tipton was uninteresting. Far from it. She was awesome and even gave us a lighting lesson to boot, while providing one of the best and most inspirational quotes of the conference: “Lighting in music for the eyes.” But while watching her do her demonstration and soaking up as much knowledge as I could, I was still drawn to the lighting truss. An idea began to form for West Side Story, which we are producing next year. A vision began to congeal. Now I’ve never seen the show, never read it, but I know the gist of the story and the setting, and I feel like the idea that is forming could work. I guess we’ll see when I see the Broadway revival this coming weekend. This idea will probably go through several incarnations before it makes its way onstage, and it may not end up looking like the first rough sketch that I have in my notebook right now, but that’s inevitably what happens, and not really the point of this particular entry. The point is, as I was pondering these thoughts that morning, I heard Ms. Tipton say that one of the most important lessons she learned from her mentors was to “Keep your eyes open.” I couldn’t agree more. If you keep your eyes open, you’ll never know what you may see that will inspire a future design, and as I hope I’ve shown, inspiration can come from anywhere.
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