Download The Changeling Education Pack - English Touring Theatre

INTERVIEW WITH BEN ORMEROD
Lighting Designer
What is your job as a lighting designer?
Well, to illuminate! I happen to believe that there is nothing quite as beautiful, or atmospheric, or exciting on
stage as the face, so my first job is to reveal that. I also have to evoke a world in which it is possible for the
events of the play to take place. Modern audiences tend to treat theatre far too literally; anything that can lift
them out of the pedestrian into the poetic is a good thing, and lighting, in this visual age, can help.
How do you begin to think about the lighting for a show?
I try to make all the artistic decisions first, and only then look at the lights I've been provided with. Lighting is
about ideas, not equipment; it's best to know what you need to do before you find out what is possible. You
usually end up being able to do what you want if the ideas are clear enough to begin with.
What's the process for you?
Of course I start by reading the play, making lists of references to weather, time of day, light as metaphor and
so on. I try not to make any choices at this stage, just ask as many questions as possible. Then I start meeting
with the director and the designer to look over the model of the set and storyboard of the show, if there is
one. I'll start sketching ideas at this stage; usually the plan deadline isn't until near the end of rehearsals so I
try not to commit myself to anything like a finished plan until I've spent some time in rehearsals. This is the
most important time for me; the more I understand what the director and actors are working towards, the
easier it is to join them on that journey. Most of my best ideas come out of the rehearsal room.
What difference does good lighting make to the production?
You start with a dark space. An actor must be seen, so you light the actor. Light is by it's very nature
atmospheric, or rather, evocative, so when you light the actor you must make a choice as to what that light is
going to evoke. Is it sunlight, daylight or moonlight? Electric light or light through water? There is another
cliché, as old as the one about good lighting being invisible, which says that lighting is atmospheric at the
expense of visibility; good lighting squares that circle by accepting that the face is the most expressive object
on stage and that light doesn't add atmosphere, it reveals it.
The dance in the madhouse [4.3] (photo: Stephen Vaughan)
18