Week 2: The Elephant Man

So for the past two weeks I've been stage managing The Elephant Man and I'm just now getting around to writing my blog about it. I got pictures of the lighting this morning before the actors showed up but it looks like the SD card in my camera is corrupted. So unfortunately there aren't any pictures.

My favorite moments in the play as far as lighting is concerned were in Scene 16 and the following dream sequence. In Scene 16 the lighting designer created a couple of very subtle yet affective cues. When Treves is describing a patient of his to Merrick he starts off by telling a story about how this patient almost died but then came back suddenly. Merrick asks Treves if this patient saw heaven and Treves then quotes her "It was neither heavenly nor hellish..." At this point I call cue 116 and the stage suddenly looks warmer. It wasn't a very drastic change but the warmth helped emphasize Treves' story about the woman who almost died. The stage seemed to glow softly. Almost like the kind of lighting that you would see at sunset. When Treves finishes his story with "It had hints of becoming a kind of bliss. She fled" I called the next cue and then the stage went back to the original harsh white lighting it was in before Treves' story. This lighting was stagnant and reminded me of an office. The other moment in Scene 16 that is notable is when Merrick asks Treves if Kendall will come back. When Treves says no the front lighting on Merrick's face goes out so only the top lighting remains. This made Merrick's face darker because it was shadowed and helped create the crestfallen look that Jennifer was going for. At the end of this scene Treves falls asleep and the next scene is his dream.

After the blackout the lights come up again and the stage is blue and white with some kind of abstract pattern thrown across it. The gobo Jennifer used on the most offstage lights made the stage look like broken glass to me. It was sharp, angular, and very disjointed. Part of what made this scene dramatic was the fact that it is one of the few scenes to use color. The blue helped signify that it wasn't reality as did the texture on the floor. Overall it helped create the absurdity of the dream.