Disassembly

All Campus Theatre

Knoxville, TN

2018

Lighting Designer: Collin Hall

Director: Keegan Tucker

Scenic Designer: Clarice Phillips

Props Master: Kathryn Nabors

Costume Designer: Kate Cannon

Stage Manager: Danielle Kowalkowski

Photo Credit: Collin Hall

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

We decided the playwright was asking us this question: Is it 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, we decided to skew reality a little bit. In order to show the uncertainty of reality through 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, but without knowing why.