Listed in order, just scroll down to find them – Bedroom Farce / Idle Women / You / Not Talking / Farragut North

Bedroom Farce

A Christmas show for New Venture’s December production. As you can see – it’s full of seasonal comfort and joy … ‘Bedroom Farce’ is exactly what it says on the tin – Alan Aykbourn’s play features four couples, in the bedrooms of three separate houses. That’s Malcom and Kate above (in Christmas hats) in their bedroom with Trevor and Susannah (whose marriage is a bit strained, as you can see).

A very interesting one for me to light. The three bedrooms are set up across the stage, and the action jumps around amongst them – so each room is lit in turn, to focus the audience’s attention.. It was like illuminating three separate sets, and I had to create a different atmosphere for each bedroom, while also preventing the light from bleeding over onto the adjoining room.

This is Ernest and Delia’s bedroom above, with Jan and Nick’s bedroom in darkness.

Here’s Jan and Nick’s bedroom lit.

And here are Kate and Malcom. They’ve just moved in, so they’re in the middle of choosing wall coverings.

It’s a farce, so there’s a lot of shocks and misunderstandings. The very complex set included passages and hallways outside the bedrooms, so they had to be lit as well.

As the action takes place at night, the set needed a lot of ‘practicals’ like bedside lamps and ceiling pendants.

Director Katie Brownings got powerful performances from her actors – there were many unforgettable moments.

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Idle Women

‘Idle Women’ was a lovely show to work on. Four amazingly talented actors / singers – that’s them, L-R – Emma, Cat, Maple and Lizzie – with Phil in the middle, who did the music and wrote a lot of the songs. Here they are on the houseboat ‘Verda’, on the mudflats at Shoreham, where they first performed this show during the Brighton Festival in the summer of 2023. The props were minimal – a set of boxes that could be rearranged to become the exterior or interior of their canal boat.

The show celebrates the work of the women who were drafted onto the waterways during World War 2, piloting narrowboats carrying cargoes of coal or steel on the British canals. The system was designated ‘Inland Waterways’, so the women were issued badges reading ‘ I W ‘. They were quickly referred to as ‘Idle Women’ by the ‘men who’d never hauled coal’, as one of the production’s songs tells it.

And here they are on the stage at Ropetackle Arts Centre in Shoreham, navigating their boat in a storm – I had to provide flashes of lightning! On ‘Verda’ I had minimal lighting, but in October I was able to use the Centre’s lighting rig (and their very helpful technical team) to produce a more atmospheric result.

A bigger team at Ropetackle in October – with more musicians and an extra actor/singer, Aaron, who played a shot-down German airman that the women encounter. That’s him on the left of the group, alongside the show’s actors and musicians.

But I enjoyed working on the first production immensely. Not as sophisticated technically – but full of powerful performances.

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You

A completely bare stage, with just two actors and a pair of black-painted chairs. That’s all the audience were given in ‘You’, New Venture’s October production.

Mark Wilson’s play is about adoption. A fifteen-year-old girl gets pregnant, and she’s forced by her mother to give the child up – “The Shame ! ”

The story’s told through the eyes and memories of Kathleen, who we meet as a woman now in her forties, waiting to receive a visit from her son, who’s coming to see her after decades without any contact.

Sophie Dearlove plays Kathleen, as well as her mother (above) and Vanessa (below), the woman who adopts the child,

Sam Masters plays Kathleen’s father, as well as Tom, Vanessa’s husband (above) and Frank, the young soldier who had the brief relationship with Kathleen (below)

Frank’s back on leave, but his mother has a new man, and a new baby, so there’s no room at home for him now. He goes out in disgust, and ends up in a disco, where he meets Kathleen.

Between them, the actors play all the characters – a total of seven. Kathleen herself, her mother and father, Frank and his mother, and Vanessa and Tom. No changes of clothing, just different vocal delivery and body posture as the actors segued from one identity to the next. Below is Kathleen’s memory of a bus journey with her father, years before… Those black chairs were very versatile.

Director Emmie Spencer staged ‘You’ in the round, with audience on all four sides of NVT’s Studio, so my lighting had to be quite tightly focused. I used a palette of blue and orange too, evoke changes in mood or different times in the narrative.

‘You’ is not an easy play to stage – the action jumps around amongst a number of characters at different times in their lives – but the cast carried it off superbly, making the poignant narrative very easy to follow.

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Not Talking

This is the party scene from ‘Not Talking’, the February production at NVT. The young recruits at an army training base get very drunk, and Amanda gets raped – which is a central theme of the play. I used a pair of manually controlled lamps fading up and down to provide the effect, along with a small disco flashing unit.

There’s an older couple too – James and Lucy. Many years before, they had lost their baby when Lucy miscarried. The play’s staging was quite minimal, all black, and I was able to isolate the grieving couple in a pool of light.

Back in the present, the brutality of military training requires that Amanda not talk about her experience, so she remains silent while Mark tries to comfort her. A later scene finds her in court, finally testifying about the assault.

Some scenes took place in a domestic setting, while many were located in the barracks. I set up two lighting states – a cold and a warmer – to suggest the changing locations.

A parallel theme is that James, a Christian, had been a Conscientious Objector during WW2, which greatly offends young soldier Mark – who is actually James’s great grandson …

… because James had had an affair, which resulted in a child, and several generations on, that liaison has produced Mark. ‘Not Talking’ is a play about family, and principles, and the consequences of not talking openly.

Amanda deals with her situation by not talking – she plays piano instead. The set included a window behind the instrument, to illuminate the pianist, and also to provide a floor shadow during the blackouts between scenes.

The action jumps back and forth, both in location and in time. It was an interesting challenge – using light to keep the various events distinct. At the play’s close, there are night scenes, where Amanda is on patrol outside, on the perimeter of the base. I was able to re-use the green lamp from the earlier disco scene.

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Farragut North

This is the opening scene of ‘Farragut North’, the January production at New Venture Theatre. A huddle of politicians and a journalist in the bar of an Ohio hotel, during a primary election to select the party’s Presidential candidate.

Interesting to light – I was able to illuminate the actors’ faces from a central lamp hanging over the booth table. The Press Secretary soon fell for the charms of the office Intern, Molly.

As you can see … But he’s targeted by a ‘fixer’ working for a rival politician. They meet at a Mexican restaurant, which I managed to evoke with a simple colour wash.

Michael Folkard’s set design featured pale cream walls, capable of taking on a colour change, which enabled me to alter the atmosphere in each scene, as required. I was able to produce a chilly early morning light for the airport, where campaign manager and press secretary meet …

… and warmer illumination for a convention, and for a variety of office locations.

The script called for a selection of hotel bedrooms. We changed the furniture arrangement slightly for each, and I altered the intensity and direction of light as needed.

At the close, the press secretary is fired, and his replacement gives a podium speech in front of a battery of journalists and photographers. We used short bursts of strobe light to simulate the camera flashes.

Hopefully the lighting in these photos looks natural – here’s a glimpse of the amount of lanterns it took to make that happen …

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