Disassembly

Disassembly

All Campus Theatre

2018
  • Lighting Designer: Collin Hall
  • Director: Keegan Tucker
  • Scenic Designer: Clarice Phillips
  • Costume Designer: Kate Cannon
  • Props Master: Kathryn Nabors
  • Stage Manager: Danielle Kowalkowski
  • Photo Credit: Collin Hall

*First Place Winner of the 2018 SETC Undergraduate Lighting Design Competition*

A key theme in this play is whether it’s better to be isolated, but safe, or to be connected, but risk losing something important. This play is populated by characters who, in one way or another, tell lies or live in a fantasy. The overall design is grounded in realism, but because the characters lie and deceive each other, they don’t know what the truth is, so to them everything seems unrealistic. To support this, the design team decided to skew reality a little bit. In order to show the uncertainty of reality through the lighting design, I chose a blue tinted green color for the front and top systems. This color is unnatural, but only enough for the audience to recognize the difference subconsciously. I added a sneakily illogical, color-mixing window to give me the ability to track mood and distance from reality. When the characters are hiding and pretending to be normal, the window is a neutral color, but when they reveal how they deviate from the norm, it shifts color, depending on the mood of the scene. Lastly, I used a mild flickering effect during Ellen’s singing scenes. The flickering is an unnatural effect, like the blue green systems, and it gives the illusion of something ominous or supernatural. With this, and the illogical source of the window, we hoped to keep the audience slightly off balance, without their knowing why.