My rendition of Light the Way Back takes place on Bucknell’s campus in the year 2082. The world has been tortured by war and plague. Society has turned towards dystopia where curfew sirens blare and many buildings sit empty.
What started as a rehearsal exercise for my actors has now become the central design idea for this project.
My concept for this play surrounds the idea of exploration. After a few rehearsals my actors became too familiar with the set, and nothing seemed new to them anymore. They lost their explorative curiosity. So I turned the lights out, and left them to rely on their prop flashlights. Once again, the space became foreign. It then occurred to me that if Cam and Jamie were actually sneaking into an abandoned building around the curfew hour, it would be pretty dark. There is a line in the script where Cam says, “There’s no way this place gets electricity anymore.” This implies that they have been standing in the pitch black with only their flashlights to look around.
This lighting concept also limits the things that are visible to the audience which allows them to discover artifacts along with Cam and Jamie. It’s a fun and realistic premise that will keep the audience attentive. More light would eventually be added when Jamie turns on the ghost light. At this point I would like some of the top lights to turn on and get brighter very slowly so that the audience doesn’t notice. Slowly and subtly this increase in brightness would add to the audience’s feeling of hope.
Additionally, I would like to take a somewhat meta approach and allude to the prior Cocktail performances from earlier in the night as if they had happened decades prior. With this in mind, I think it would be cool if the props that litter the stage be the props from all of the prior performances in the show, thus perhaps suggesting that we have been transported to the future, and that the theater Cam and Jamie are exploring was last used and abandoned by the current performers, audience, and crew members.
In order to enhance this environment, I would like to make a few script changes. When Cam finds a script in the costume trunk, it will read, Cocktail Theatre, rather than A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Also, when Cam and Jamie find a phone, rather than watching a choreography video they will watch a video of one of the prior cocktails.
In terms of scenic design, I would like to include at least one piece of scenery from every prior cocktail performance. I would also like to strip any pleasant visual aesthetics from the theater, pulling back the curtain to expose the bare brick wall, and the hidden furniture pieces hiding behind it. I’d also like to scatter additional random props and technical equipment across the stage as if the show had been in rehearsals when the theatre was abandoned.
By including pieces of technical equipment, as well as costumes and scripts, we acknowledge theatre as an art form. Art is a part of culture. By using recognizable pieces from other cocktails, we recognize Cocktail theatre as a tradition. Tradition is a part of culture, as well.
The script then suggests that this culture has been lost, but through our lighting design our audience will likely leave the show feeling optimistic and restored. Through the idea that exploration illuminates lost culture, we take the term “illuminate” to be literal. Cam and Jamie use their lights, to find more light, to shed light on a lost tradition and artform.