In the spotlight

What is it that draws practitioners into theatre lighting design and what are the key elements of the craft? The three contestants in this year’s Irish Theatre Awards tell their own stories

Three lighting designers are nominated for the best designer lighting category in this year’s Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards. The work ranges from detailed lighting patterns for large industrial areas to subtle and precise lighting for more traditional stages. Here, each nominee speaks about their work and the role of lighting design in modern theatre.

ADAM SILVERMAN

Nominated for Misterman, produced by Landmark Productions and Galway Arts Festival

Some shows are easy for all the wrong reason. Mistermanwas easy for all the right reasons, as we were all on the same page. The performance by Cillian Murphy, the way it was directed by Enda Walsh and the set by Jamie Vartan were all a gift for any lighting designer. We didn't have any big aesthetic conversation about the lighting. It felt to me like it had to be real and natural and it couldn't feel very theatrical. I wanted to have a feeling of the character finding these practical lights. There was not a lot of colour used except the dance scene and that should have felt real for that space.

I won’t do a show unless I can spend time in the rehearsal room. I was around for the last week of rehearsals in London. I guess the architecture of the space dictated what I did with the light and what kind I used.

The lighting needed Cillian to be very precise in his movements. In some scenes, if he was a few feet out in any direction, it would have had a very different look. He is a great collaborator, and is interested in what you have to say. I don’t think his technical knowledge comes from the fact he has film work behind him. I think it comes from the fact he started out in theatre and he works really hard. He does what needs to be done and keeps working on it until it is exactly the way everyone else wants it. Because of the set, we were constantly messing around and changing and moving things and adjusting it.

In terms of the awards, it is nice to be acknowledged. Not that many people really know what we do. It won’t affect me in any way. I worked on shows nominated for other awards and you think there will be a trickledown effect. There usually isn’t, but it is still really nice to be recognised.

CIARAN BAGNALL

Nominated for Guidelines for A Long and Happy Life, produced by Tinderbox Theatre Company

This show was a site-specific piece in an old printing factory that hadn’t been used in about 15 years. So we had to install everything including power and then get all the lighting into the space.

We worked for six weeks on getting the venue ready. It was quite a brave lighting design in that it was stark and pushed the boundaries of what site-specific could be. We had to go right back to the drawing board as we had no conventional lighting bars and instead we had cable ties holding up lanterns and all kinds of things like that. With site-specific you can light things much differently and do things which simply couldn’t be done on stage. For example, in the opening sequence in our production, we had two characters walk the entire length of space, which was about 50 metres. It lasted about three or four minutes and as the audience were watching these two characters, we had two shafts of lights guiding them. It made for a fantastic opening and we were able to tightly control the audience’s sightlines. You could never have done it in a theatre or, if you could, it would be very hard to get the audience to see it from the same angle. With the lighting, we weren’t disguising the fact we were in a printing factory, but the architecture of the space helped add to a bleak post-apocalyptical atmosphere.

I first got into lighting design when I was 15 and a student at the Christian Brothers in Newry. They did an Irish language theatre festival in the local town hall, and I became part of the lighting team. Something about it exploded with me including the community and artistry of it. When it came to decision-making for university, it was a toss-up between art and theatre. I went to Cardiff and studied technical theatre as there was no real training course in Ireland at the time.

Since I graduated there are a lot of advances in technology. In theatre, there is not a great deal of money so usually we are 10 years behind some of the equipment they use now in big productions. I use a lot of equipment that is about 40-50 years old. I know it and can understand it. I suppose one of the big differences now is how we control the light from a central desk – that has become very advanced.

I am thrilled and over the moon with the nomination. I do a lot work in the UK and a few years ago I won best design in the Manchester Evening NewsTheatre Awards. It is a nice thing on the CV. But in terms of opening doors, it is hard to say what notice people take of it. It does you no harm but it is never something you think about in the thick of a production. Some productions you feel are worthy of awards and don't get them. So you never know really what people are looking for.

AEDIN COSGROVE

Nominated for All That Fall,produced by Pan Pan, and Man of Valour,produced by Corn Exchange

With Man of Valour, I was involved from the start, and the fact that actor Paul Reid is so physical and talented made it work. He can hit a mark spot on every time. It was then possible to have a very dynamic lighting design. It was an amazing achievement by him to negotiate that space and the lighting spot every time, and I was delighted with it.

It was a play containing many locations and going from Dublin city centre to apartments and other places. How I approached it was I had a mapped plan of the city distilled into locations that we could represent with certain kinds of light. So, for an exterior Dublin scene, the light temperature of the outside was cooler than inside, which might be lit by fluorescent light. You can make that colour difference with the instruments you use. Or, if a house has yellow walls or green walls, you can use the shades of light that might be reflecting off the walls.

For All That Fall, we didn't have any actor present as it was a radio play. I got to light the room for the audience and had to think about it completely differently. We were asking them to listen to something very carefully so the environment of the lighting had to follow the play.

When I’m working on a show, I’m always in the room from the first read through or even before it. By the time the actors are in the rehearsal room, we should have most of what we intend to do figured out. I’m constantly looking at lighting and drawing inspiration from all sorts of places.

Lighting environments are very different now than they used to be. Different types of street lighting and LEDs are huge now. The intensity of the colours in the new lighting is really completely different. If we were to go back 20 years, the world would look so different, lighting wise. I spend a lot of time in China and the light there is very different, so that inspires me. But I guess, like every lighting designer, most of the inspiration we get comes from the sun, which is the source of all light for us.

The Irish Times

Irish Theatre Awards winners will be announced at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham on Sunday, February 26th