"Let there be light"! I think Kitty Getlik said that. Or maybe it was someone else. In the fog of exhaustion that surrounds you during Tech Week, it's hard to remember. In any case, whoever said it was only telling part of the story. When it comes to producing good theater, it's not just about having light, it's about the right light provided in the right way at the right time. As a Perry Award reviewer, I've seen too many community theatre productions around New Jersey whose idea of lighting design is to turn the lights on when the curtain goes up and wait for the bows to turn them off. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but you get my point.Kitty, a three time Perry Award nominee for Lighting Design, is also the Artistic Director of the Kelsey Theatre. There's no one better to have designing the lighting for your show. And she's a dynamite person to boot. I'm am blessed to know her and very fortunate to be working with her.When we started talking about lighting design for Driving Miss Daisy, we were in sync immediately. "I'm thinking very warm tones," she said. "Very nostalgic." That's exactly what I was looking for as well. In fact, in a previous meeting with other members of the design staff (set and set dressing) I said I was going for the feel of a Norman Rockwell painting. And I think in the end we achieve it pretty closely once all the pieces were in place.The added advantage of working with Kitty is that she is also an excellent director, a Perry Award nominated actress and a fine educator. That means she can serve as an extra set of eyes when it comes to the directing and the acting and uses her experience in those areas to inform her lighting. And as an educator, she's very patient with new comers and first-timers and doesn't mind doing a lot of explaining. She also offers suggestions at times, but only when she knows the director is open to them. We have a very good working relationship, which I think is critical between a lighting designer and a director. She tries her best to understand what I'm looking for and give me what I want, but at the same time, she doesn't shy away from saying: "That's not going to work the way you think it will." (And then she'll do it to show me and she'll be proven right.)Kitty has also been helpful in giving tips on directing and acting. Before tech week started, I told her I was open to any and all suggestions she had; that I wasn't going to offended as some people might be if she spoke up. I'm sure she's very conscious of not stepping on another director's toes, but in my conversation with her I wanted to make clear that I'd rather she step on one of my toes than I make an embarrassing blunder. She took that to heart, and while she hasn't made too many suggestions, the ones she's made have all been right on target and I made sure to pass them along to the cast and crew.When it comes to the lighting design we, again, are mixing styles -- abstract and realism. Kitty told me up front that if I'm going to do that, I need to be consistent with where I use those styles and ensure that the lighting in those areas follow the realistic and abstract conventions. Here's a great example of keeping the style of the lighting aligned to the style of the different playing areas and at the same time applying subtle lighting effects to support a dramatic moment.Each of the three characters has a moment in the play where he or she opens up to let the audience see what's in their hearts. These are little monologues or soliloquies. Daisy's is a story about remembering the first time she went to Mobile when she was 12. Hoke's is about recalling seeing his best friend's father's body after he was lynched by racists. And Boolie's is when he tells of his fears about how the business community will react if he goes to a dinner honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. During these scenes, I had wanted some special lighting that subtly highlighted the speaker. Something that the audience wouldn't notice, but which would make them "feel" drawn into the story that character was telling. At the same time, I was going to have the sound engineer slowly drop out the ambient background sounds, another technique for focusing the audience's attention. Both Daisy's and Hoke's stories come in the car. Kitty came up with the idea of lighting the scene using the techno beam focused on the actor telling the story, but the beam's light color and intensity was set to blend into the lighting of the rest of the scene so you didn't know it was there. Then, as the scene reached the moment where the actor started telling his or her story, she brought down the surrounding lighting very slowly and subtley, leaving the techno beam at its original strength. The result is a slight and subtle dimming of everything except the person talking. This, combined with the slow subtle potting down of the ambient sound draws the audience into the moment.This works wonderfully for Daisy and Hoke's story because it is a stylistic lighting technique employed in an abstract playing area. But Kitty was quick to point out that the same technique applied the exact same way for Boolie's story would be wrong, because Boolie tells his story while standing in Daisy's living room, which is a realistic setting. So to get the same impact and keep the lighting more realistic in style, Kitty took a different tact. She employed a gobo that threw the shadow of a window light onto the set. When Boolie reached that moment in the scene where he started telling his story, he simply stepped into that light. It made it appear as though he was looking out a window while telling the story, the lighting highlighted Boolie, while Daisy's lighting was much softer. The impact was exactly the same as Daisy's and Hoke's special moment's, but done in a style that allowed us to keep the lighting in the realistic playing areas consistent.There are many examples in the show where Kitty uses her knowledge and techniques to strengthen the story telling. Most are not meant to be noticed, so much as felt. After you've seen the show once for the whole experience, I encourage you to go back a second time and pay closer attention to not just what you felt during a particluar scene, but how she made you feel it. It's really impressive work.Labels: Daisy Journal, Driving Miss Daisy, Kitty Getlik, Lighting Design
