For the lighting, we had to take into account, where we were going to set and place in the building, our 15 minute excerpt of Woyzeck. We decided on a promenade style of performance, as this felt most natural when we read through the fragmented scenes chosen. Unfortunately, this then presented a problem for lighting design, as there is only one space throughout our entire performance where specially designed lighting can be used. Therefore, we had to think carefully about the lighting that we did want to use in studio two, and the way that we wanted to use the space in order to keep up the feel of the piece.
When researching Woyzeck, my main objective was looking at the lighting, originally we looked at the filmed version of it by Werner Herzog, staring Klaus Kinski (1979). However, this performance of Woyzeck has mostly what light there would have been if the settings were real, so this was not much help as our piece is tending towards the strange and grotesque. There were other productions that did use strange lighting, such as the production by Vesturport. I have included some of the photos from this production here;
(http://vesturport.com/media/pictures/woyzeck-dvd-photos/)
Their production used mainly steely blues, often interspersed with shafts of clinical white light. To highlight the more sensual scenes a more heated colour theme was used, this time mostly oranges, reds and rich pinks. The range of lighting that they used shows the advantages of having a theatre sized rig that is specially designed for your production, as ours is in studio two in the Lpac, we cannot achieve such a variety of lighting. However, that is not to say that our lighting effects will not be as effective as theirs. Our lighting will reflect the way that Woyzeck’s mind is working, (or not working), and will also add to the grotesque feeling to our performance which will have been running throughout the entire production.
More on this will be added after our technical rehearsal has been completed.
Sally
How about using drak natural light? Say performing in an outside space, just with the light from the night sky. I think this would be very interesting and add some extra creepy-ness to the peice.
Kirsty
that depends on where we perform it, and what equipment we’ve got available. Unfortunately, natural light would make the performance seem quite flat and boring. However, if that is what we intend then that’s how we’ll do it. Though my personal opinion is that natural light wouldn’t work for our piece, I definately think that Woyzeck works better in the dark, as a darker piece.
except for the obvious technical difficulties of the main performance how do you inted to branch out for the other scenes for the finished piece? Is there going to be any natural light?
Aaron