Kudy vede cesta k pochopení a ovládnutí světla ve scénickém prostoru? Jaké jsou požadavky a trendy v tomto oboru a jaký prostor pro tvůrčí kreativitu nabízí? Odpovědi na tyto otázky hledali světelní designéři Pavla Beranová, František Fabián, Jiří Šmirk i francouzský audiovizuální umělec Romain Tardy. Celý článek od Veroniky Štefanové..

In Brazil, we never had specialized schools for the education in lighting. My experience with teaching the profession of a lighting designer has started in the beginnings of 2010. My professional start followed the same direction as the one of colleagues from my generation. I went to work into theatre to occupy a vacancy in the audio area and then I changed to light and learnt while I was working. After some time working in small theaters and clubs, I was an employee of a lighting rental company and I learnt everything I could correlate to technology, still analogic. Then my journey into the lighting design led me into the Teatro da Vertigem (www.teatrodavertigem.com.br) and it was introducing to me the questions that made me to study and search.  It allowed me to consolidate my knowledge in the esthetic and technological field.

Is lighting design rather an art or technical profession?

It depends on the area that you choose in the lighting. It can be technical (setup technician, console operator, rigger) or it can be artistic (light designing). In the case of the lighting designer, you must have a technical know-how to create, as does the painter, writer, actor or director. All the artistic fields need that technical to express it, but in dependence on the area in lighting, it will to determine if it get more technical or artistic. It is impossible to say for sure “work with lighting is technical or artistic in nature”.

Do you think that it’s possible to talk about personal “handwriting” or style of a lighting designer? What is that?

I am absolutely sure of this and I believe that it’s important to seek your style, your research, and your own identity. I think that this can manifest itself in the use of specific colors, equipment, angles and technologies, which starts to be recurrent in consecutive works. I believe this can be a tenuous line, for example what is a repetition of formulas and what is in fact a trace of research. But what can determine one point or another is how much these elements are connected with the scene.

Do you use any presentation software that would give you a simulated scene with lights?

As I come from the practical and I have been working with lights for many years and the use of this technology took a long time to come in Brazil and I leave on the ‘look into the space’ and its frequent use in the rehearsal room would make me ‘believe’ in my hypotheses and ideas. I think that it also works for the creative work, most in theater, like anything in the artistic field; so it shall have a dose of risk, of equilibrium. I try to keep my projects from the beginning of the planning until their execution opened to the accidents. I have time to prepare myself technically, to think about the equipment, to decide the angles, to make the choice of the colors and when I concretize all of that in setup’s day, I let myself be taken by the problems that emerge from it. Every step brings me questions that I’ll assimilate; I call that a process and I try to be attentive to what comes from it. If I create in the software and look technically at it taking off all of the possible ‘defects’, I will not know how the result would be, and it is a little bit sterile for me. I say that specifically about the theatre and about a certain kind of theatre, as the one in the “Teatro da Vertigem”, where we work with long processes. I could not say the same about corporate events, architecture and other fields of lighting. I believe that the software use is more than welcome in these cases. I can use the Grand MA, or Wysiwyg. Actually, I work with a team and dedicate myself to think, I give concept to the project and I share the other steps with assistants and interns.

Can you describe a typical content of a day of a lighting designer?

It all depends of the production, because here in Brazil they can change a lot. I will talk about my routine in the creative works of Teatro da Vertigem, because that is what interests me most. In general, we have long processes and we start with a theme (AIDS in Brazil, public health, fashion/consume/slave labour, family, work/capitalism today) and theoretic and empirical research, which I am part from the beginning. After this definition of the theme, I start my own research. My routine, I can say so far that starts with a bigger research about what the group is going to take to the scene (I work always with a team of interns, I like collaborators in the creation, I think a team is more effective than the solitary work, I choose specialists: technicians, architecture students who mastered the technical design etc). This theme gives the start of my esthetic, conceptual and material’s research. Depending on the time of process, it goes and results in experiments during the rehearsal. I’m present during all the practice and use it to experiment with possibilities of textures, colors, angles, material, and also possibilities of installation (map). Part of my work is to produce luminaires, in a handmade process, something that produces a dialogue with the architecture because we work with site specific; church, hospital, prison, stores, abandoned theater, a river and their ships. In the moment that the project consolidates to the technical design, with it in hands I check if everything is going to work right, which is some kind of on-site confirmation from the project executive. These steps aren’t isolated, they’re mixed up, but I’m separating them here so we can understand better that ‘step-by-step’ of the work. So then I start the setup and I follow experimenting, recording, changing positions if we need to, until the process is fully consolidated. So we go on to the final rehearsals and I follow the work looking and correcting.

Can we expect a new astonishing lighting technology that will surpasses all the current in the future?

The lighting industry and stage technology won’t stop themselves and this is very important for those who work in this area. Here in Brazil, we live in a transition that is very interesting to me to work in and to make research about it. The LEDs, moving lights, colors made of dichroic filters, the use of RGB in the composition of color, they’re all still not too much explored in the theatre, I don’t say that about the musical theatre but the dramatic theatre, experimental, this researching theater. This interests me a lot. We are living here through the same transition as it was during the invention of the fire, the gas, the electric light, the analogical controllers, the digital consoles and design software. It’s interesting for me to work in this place, to use this machines, between all what we have of most primitive, most archaic nature. This attrition is the moment I live from creativity and is my research. I await new technologies, but I still have to experiment a lot and to use the things at my disposal. I believe that Europe and United States have been through that, but we still have the time to assimilate what we got and loose the preconception about what theatre light is and what is not. I think technologies are for that, all can be used in the theatre, here we still don’t accept it, but what is the most important thing is what the scene requires and not what asks the tradition.

What are you working on in the present time?

I am still finishing the season of the last presentation of Teatro da Vertigem, “O Filho” (“The Son”), based on the Franz Kafka’s book, “Letter to His Father”. Simultaneously, I have finished the school year in SP Escola de Teatro (www.spescoladeteatro.org.br), in which I coordinate the Lighting Design School. In the first semester of 2016, we’ll begin to do the research of the text for our new project, “A Construção de F. Kafka” (“The Construction of F. Kafka”) that will complete our trilogy (Kastelo, Karta ao Pai and Konstrução). And in the next year, I’ve got some things already scheduled: a tour in Brazil with “O Filho”, two productions, the ending of a luminotechnical project in a Museum and FLIP (important literary fair in the country) and some few corporate events.

If you have a look on a scene at the stage, how would you tell good lighting from the bad? Is it possible at all to recognize what is a concept and what is a mistake?

It has to be something really evident, some ambiguities are hard to be detected. As I live by this and my sight’s been active and I am always attentive to the movements, shapes, use of color, angles. Sometimes I pay more attention to how the sense of precariousness becomes hard to be represented. I see my apprentices using an elaborated speech with a lot of justification, but a long way distant to what we see in the scene. The fragility of the design is always evident to the eyes of a specialist. It is impossible to have a convincing design without a technical domain and strong references.

What do the references in the lighting design mean to you?

My references are assorted and it depends a lot on the project. My current reference is the city. The urban light fascinates me. Its shadows, the contrast with the internal environments, the buses in movement, the different qualities of car headlights (nowadays with halogens, xenon, LED), the lights of the houses invading the street, from the Neopentecostal churches with the cold white light, til contrast among the environments seen of the streets, the wet road with the marks of the traffic. In short, one infinite world of light and shadow. Depending on the work, I’ll choose a perspective. Whether it is related to work, fine arts, cinema, cartoon, urban art, design. It interests me a lot to relate the equipment with the architecture of the scene, this why does exist a very big variation in the use of references. It is always connected to the work, for which I will design the lights. For the use of the color, first I let myself to contaminate by the project and by the guidelines of the scenography and art direction, then I write my own search. I am in love with the contrast and I started my career ‘drowned’ in bright/dark, expressionism, noir. I still think a lot about the shadow as a very strong possibility to the scene and I study new possibilities to the bright/dark. If I am not wrong: “We are instructed to do the negative; the positive is already within us”, Kafka maybe mentioned something about that.

When I was a kid I was amazed by cartoons, like every child I would say. My father showed me cartoon with a 8 mm projector in the house: he would mount the film reel in the projector and then switch on the lamp of the machine. The light would soon start to flicker inside the shutter and the film to advance through the plate, revealing the magic of motion and so I was astonished. I was very excited by the characters getting alive, this was a kind ceremony for me and I have a very vivid picture of this in my memory. I think this strongly motivate me when I later decided to study animation. Also I think as a student I was lucky to find the right school and some great teachers and this kept the dream alive. I would say that Videomapping later came as a natural evolution of all this life experience. I strongly acknowledge videomapping as an expanding reprojection of cinematic depiction.

Could you tell us about your first videomapping?

I discovered videomapping by chance, collaborating on a theatre piece where video acted as part of the narrative. The wings of the stage covered the lower section of characters’ bodies. Thus the  video projections completed the remaining portion of the acting scene. A very simple visual inter-act which needed some visual clarity to produce an effective result, so I created a video mask layer to clean up the projection: I suddenly realize the whole range of possibilities and I remember this as a clear moment of enlightenment and inspiration.

You mix traditional and digital animation, would you say that you have a “unique”  approach to the videomapping?

When the lived experience of architecture untangles the complexity of memory and imagination, light becomes the only medium to grant access to the space in order to enlarge imagination: and so the ephemeral moments of our recollections become sharper. I investigate “gesture” as physicalization of oneiric substance and so I’m looking for new means between handcrafts and numeric art.

Could you describe your creative process?

We apply Tra-digital animation as a case study, where the paradox of “timing” becomes material: such declination explores the edges of imagination and questions the liminality between literature and space. Our narrative often explores the notion of memory, places and marks: we depict a journey into idealization, romanticism and paradoxical re-thinking of new contemporary forms of art.

How much are you influenced by the story of the building that you are mapping?

Buildings often speak to themselves, they carry their own history and so everything lays there, embodied within. Jan Swankmajer believes that by touching objects you deposit feelings and emotion in them, so creating the dormant soul of any inanimate object: he then works to “excavate” such content from the object, through the animation process. Architecture and Buildings are constructed, lived, inhabited, used, converted, destroyed, bombed and rebuilt, so they are possessed by incredible spirits. In our work we try so to deepen inside the history, because videomapping cannot just be related to the facade, and to expose our discovery to the audience, which always has a big role in our creative intent.

Your are mostly known for your videomapping creations, but you are also a teacher in the Fine Arts Academy, an animator, a graphic designer, a visual artist… In which area do you like to work the most?

I don’t have a favorite one. I keep ideas and approaches interconnected so things stay fresh and I can experiment more. I’m fascinated by the exploration of the intimate connection between topics and tools, artistic expression and signifier. But mostly indeed I like teaching because it’s a playground where I can express my true self and where I can practise on the most fascinating tool, which is the human soul.

Recently you worked in theatre, how do you feel the difference? Where do you feel more comfortable?

Theatre is the dilution of an instant, the expansion of a moment, the diary of the present. It’s both a mystery and a revelation, it’s the supreme ground for any artistic discourse. I enjoy working inside dark spaces, it’s like a discourse with the subconscious.

Behind Lab Mammasonica, there is more than one person. Is the team work important for you?

Team work is everything for us, it’s the secret, it’s the real key to success.

What are you working on now and what are your projects in the near future?

I’m currently working on new installation in public spaces and developing immersive installation. I’m willing to investigate more on the relations between the matter and its immaterial surroundings.

In the last productions you worked on, you had to share the space with the light. What do you think about this combination? How did you deal with it?

I don’t personally consider projectors much different from traditional light source, it’s really just a matter of how you approach them.

Your latest installations took place in Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, and now you are starting to work again in Sicily, how do you explain that?

No specific reason for this, really. New media are starting to augment locally and we are naturally taking part into this development. There are endless possibilities but there are more difficulties here than abroad. Italy needs a lot of attention since the last twenty years our culture was vandalized by politics and television.

Videomapping became very popular. Do you think videomapping era is already ending? How can you still amaze people?

Videomapping will be considered merely a projection technique, a tool. Nowadays a strong visual detachment has been achieved from the physical perception through the virtual realm. Any interplay between mapping and kinetics, light and matter offer a complete new range of spatial considerations, shifting our attention from surfaces to the volume. We only started to move, thus it’s just the end of the beginning.

What were your beginnings? What attracted you to theatre, to the lighting in particular?

My story with theatre started when I became a director’s assistant. Because the role of an assistant ends at the day of the premiere, I started thinking about work that would allow me to remain further on after the formation of performances. So I started touring with rigging performances and learning the use of lights there when I was first carrying cables, setting up the fixtures, learning to read light plots… I was gradually getting technical knowledge until somebody in the theatre, where I was working, offered me direction of lights for the first time. As a director’s assistant, I was an interpreter of excellent lighting designer Krzysztof Warlikowski, for whom I have been working as an assistant for the last thirteen years and who put a large emphasis on lighting.

Can you tell us a little bit more about your first lighting design?

Because I didn’t have much experience, it was difficult. I was working mainly intuitively thanks to some initial ideas.

Do you have your own style with which you work with lights?

I think so. Many people told me that they were capable of recognizing, which productions were done by me. Naturally, each production is different and I work hard on not repeating myself.

Can you describe your typical day of a lighting designer?

When I am in a theatre ten days before the premiere, I usually don’t come out of the theatre between 10 pm until 2 am. The work on lighting requires concentration, silence and nighttime.

Your main field of interest is theatre and opera but you were lighting concerts and museums as well. Where would you prefer to work?

Each of these fields is interesting and I always consider it to be a challenge. I adore the work that I encounter for the first time. Although I like the most to do lighting for theatre and dance.

What are you working on now and what would you like to be busy with in the future?

At the moment, I prepare three drama productions and one performance to the anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising. I have all planned until 2017.

In the last projects, in which you were participating, you had to share the space with video. What do you think about the quality of this new source of light? Has it influenced your lighting design?

At the present, the participation of video and light is quite common in the visual component of any production. Many remarkable video creators have appeared and possibilities of equipment are much more bigger in this field. I have no problem with the light complementing strong impulses of video or animation provided that we have space for it in the performance and it isn’t only an ornament without any meaning.

If we take your portfolio into consideration, you have created more than twelve productions with director Agata Duda-Gracz. Does it have any value for you to work with somebody you know?

We plan four more productions with Agatha and I hope that it won’t end with it. Such long term cooperation provides great opportunities for understanding even without words and for building a joint language. It is only necessary to make intermissions for not to repeat ourselves too much and rather for mutually inspiring each other.

In the first decade of the 21^st century, the number of female directors in Poland grew exponentially. Does it concern also female lighting designers? Does development take place here as well?

There are more female lighting designers in Poland than it used to be, but the lack of education is still a huge problem in this regard. The majority of women that deal with light in Poland are stage designers or lighting technicians after having studied at a film school.

Can you determine how important is the role of light in your work?  

The color is very important for me. Colors start appearing in my head already during the first reading of the text, other are added when I examine textiles and fabric for costumes and colors used in set design. There exist some productions, which remain colorless, there are even such where the color are maximally intensive. Everything depends on the meaning. The light has to have meaning, to be wise, to lay dramaturgical emphasis, to lead the spectator, to create an atmosphere and to be beautiful or ugly, but it has to have meaning, which concerns color as well.

You are going to be a jury member at the Czech Dance Platform, which is going to bestow the Lighting Design Award. What do you think about awards for lighting design?

Awards for lighting design are very important, because there are only few of them. I am glad that it changes slowly. Light in theatre is similarly important as the music, costumes or set design and video. And all these elements together produce theatre.

Lately, you were helping with the preparation of the book about Krzysztof Warlikowski  „Krzysztof Warlikowski: Chronology of Life and Work“, so you aren’t engaged only in light?

I have been working as a director’s assistant for thirteen years. Krzysztof Warlikowski  is only one. He taught me everything and I am obliged to him for many things. It is the most important encounter in my life. I try to join both the passions and when I read his message for the international theatre day that he wrote, I feel big excitement, pride and honor that I could work with him for so many years.

What was your first contact with theatre?

School, parents- I can’t remember.

When did you get the idea to work in the theatre area?

It was always a factor in my life, even when I was encouraged to do sensible jobs by my teachers and parents!

And about light design, what was your first experience?

Designing for Half Moon Young Peoples Theatre in London- being handed the back of an envelope and a pencil and told: ‘You do this one’.

Could you give 5 words, which are the essence of light design for you?

Observation, engagement, context, balance, communication.

Later you started to teach light design, what is the principle of your method?

Experiment and reflection. Understanding of the aim of the work and of the context: audience is everything.

What is the best way to teach lighting design?

Broad humanistic education covering science and humanities, constantly coming back to light and how we are engaged in it. A small scale experiment then large scale application, repeated. Having people examine reductively and demonstrate holistically. Looking at each tool in the designer’s toolbox then understanding why they are used.

How do you combine your both experiences: as a lighting designer/lecturer and acting trainer? Is it an advantage for you?

The motive for action of both designer and actor comes from the same point: an honest and clear engagement synergy between artist and craft. The relationship between physical and luminous performance is constant when experienced by an audience.

What are you working on in the present time?

A workshop exploring stories, memories and spaces.

What do you expect in near future?

To develop connections with the mainland European models of lighting design.

What is your favorite space to work with / in?

Black box gives a blank canvas; proscenium arch gives a connection with the infinite; a found space gives synergy.

Do you have some favorite sources of light? What sources do you use at home?

Tungsten is full of archaic resonance and relates to our organism. Day/Night light is full of change and wide spectral texture.

What do you thing about reactive / interactive lighting in daily use (home, public space…)

The future is in controlling the light. Constant light is very young and we are still in childish awe of it.

Are you fond of new technologies in lighting? How do you follow them?

New technologies are about how and why we use things, not what new things we can manufacture. My work brings me into constant contact with new and established designers and the industries furnishing them with their tools.

What do you think about the statement: “Lighting = Video, Video = Lighting”?

Costume=Curtains, Curtains=Costumes. Just because they use the same matter, it doesn´t mean that they are the same thing. They creativity from the contact between these two should be more important than the ease of putting them together.

What is your opinion on politics of tungsten bulbs in EU?

It is a smokescreen to sell more products – industry led Fascism. Better use of light, both natural and artificial, will save more resources than inventing new sources.

Would you be able to describe your “handwriting” in lighting design?

Synergy and detail flowing through time.

Daniel Tesař belongs among  the best Czech lighting designers and can be compared to his foreign colleagues, although he has not  studied this subject. Since 1999, he has been fully devoted to theatre and event lighting as a lighting designer, technical manager, to supplies and provision of equipment. He currently works as a lighting designer for major domestic venues (the National Theatre, the State Opera, the Estates Theatre, Ponec Theatre, Archa Theatre, NoD etc.), prestigious events in the Czech Republic and abroad, collaborates with renowned choreographers and directors in the field of dance, opera and drama. He is a co-owner of a business company that is perhaps best known in this field.

For many younger colleagues, he is an embodiment of a mentor and always willing advisor, either in the field of technical or creative issues.

Obligatory question at the beginning: What was your path to lighting and lighting design?

In 1991, I started working as an electrician in the Theatre Behind the Gate II. That’s how I was trained and then I worked in the ČKD Tatra enterprise for four years. In the theatre, I quickly got into lighting and discovered the world that had been hidden before. Director Otomar Krejča paid large attention to lighting and I became enchanted by that work. The concept of lighting design was unknown, one used lighting as good as he could. Performances of the domestic companies were quite challenging, even if measured by present-day standards. I met the lighting design during the productions of the companies from abroad, which performed at the venue from time to time. They were dancing companies, I cannot remember the names, from Holland, Germany, Israel, Finland. There were not few. And I was fascinated and wanted to do it as they did. I wanted to be a part of the show. I learned the basic craft in the TBG II.  And after the closure of the theatre, I worked as a technician for the Prague Chamber Ballet for five years. I created first separate lighting designs there for performances by Petr Zuska, Robert North and Joachim Heckman. The Prague Chamber Ballet had a good name and played at big venues all over Europe. I have added experience to the basic craft and I was very ambitious, too.

You often work for opera, is it your favorite genre?

I work for opera among other things, but yes, I like it best at the moment. Today, it is a complex, highly professional genre where everything is at stake.

You are known for your skeptical attitude towards the lighting design as an artistic field –  what is then lighting design for you, how would you define it?

Yes, I am skeptical in this respect. I understand the lighting design as an important component of a performance, but it’s just one of the crafts. Rather a technical and servant craft. It cannot aspire to be an artistic field as the integrity of its author is not at stake and it will not stand by itself.  It will prove well in the service of the task.  As a good chair serves for good seating.  We can admire a really nice chair for its functionality and beauty. But we do not perceive it as art. So I understand the creation of a lighting design as a sort of carpentry.

What have you recently found interesting in the lighting design – in architecture, theatre, music, or anywhere else?

Lately? Well: I really enjoyed the performance of my friend Johanna Mai Vihalem. It was called Light up your life, I saw it in the Kampa Theatre or whatever is the theater’s name now. A great example of creativity, simplicity and wit. Johanna knows what she wants to say and how to say it. I recommend it. I also liked the performance Red Cliff by the Beijing Opera.  The lighting design was not complicated, but corresponded well with traditional scenery. Night architecture is infested by tasteless, embarrassing lighting of buildings without any context. Possibly the most horrible example may be the lighting of the Týn Church. On the other hand, I always appreciate how nice, tasteful and casual was carried out the lighting design of the Prague Castle. It is a very old work, I think that the author was a French designer.  No ego or arrogance towards the space looms from the design, everything is clean, moderate and somehow discreet. Anyway, I’m not sure whether there should not be just darkness at night. Except for street lamps.  Light of a low-pressure discharge lamp is beautiful.

Is it possible to talk about personal “handwriting” or style of a lighting designer?

Certainly, each of the designers has his style and an experienced spectator recognizes this style. However, this is not too much important for the spectator. It is essential that the director, choreographer and designer are familiar with the style. For cooperation,  you choose such people that you trust and you know the way how they work. Creativity is only one of the requirements. Others are reliability, ability to communicate with other components that form performance, organizational talent, the ability to pay attention to the details, not to give in to stress. There is so much that needs to be covered for you to accomplish the goal. Furthermore, each of the designers is subjected to the period trends, experiences  his own evolution, and copies the others a little. Each and every designer is usually a bearer of a certain concept, which he develops, improves, if he has the opportunity, multiplies technical means and then repeats. After the time comes to new possibilities of expression and the process begins anew.  Over time, he will discover possibilities of a new  expression and the process will start again. The more he is experienced, the wider the range of expressions is available to him. Then you will acquire self-confidence and become freer.

The field of a lighting technology, and especially in the theatre, has its own language – for one thing the jargon of the theatrical background, for another often technical terms, which are borrowed or even made Czech, based on international practice, i.e. universal English. How do you look at the Czech branch “terminology”? Does it make sense to seek Czech equivalents to already-established expressions?  

The world of lighting, sound and stage technology is multicultural and English dominates here. Respectively – all essential comes from the Anglo-Saxon region. Technology, innovation, way of work organization,  all the trends. It’s similar as in other fields. What is essential comes from the outside. We are here on the periphery. According to me, it has no meaning to search for  Czech equivalents to  expressions, which became familiar in the language of lighting technicians and which express general phenomena based on the context. How to express the concept “wash”? Watering? A little weird, right? For example, the concept FOH, which stands for Front of House – the lights placed against the stage, but not on the fly bars and not on the ground. How to say that in Czech? Front light? The lights from the front? Or lights that are located outside the stage? It would certainly be possible  in many various ways. But the concept FOH is understood  by anyone in the field, it is entirely clear what lights, or more precisely positions are meant. Expressions that are not based on the context can easily find translation. An example is the English term dimmer, “stmívač“ in Czech.  There is no context here, it concerns a specific device. Anyway, let each one uses such a language what’s his preference.

 

Can we expect a new astonishing lighting technology that will surpasses all the current in the future?

I do not think that a revolution would be lying ahead of us in a foreseeable future. After all , nothing of the sort has ever taken place. Technology develops faster in one moment, slower in the other, depending on the development of the related fields. The future is likely to be influenced by the speed of the development of LED, AMOLED and PHOLED technologies, implemented this way or another in lighting technology. Development and application in practice is a lengthy process.  Let’s not expect an astonishing technology for the time being.  Let’s use the one we have so far. On the other hand, what I know about tomorrow: Vacuum bulb, which changed our world so much, is only 133 years old.

Which light source from the point of view of aesthetics  / quality of light do you prefer, lamp, fluorescent lamps, LED …?

HMI 2500W discharge lamp, 5600K.

If you had to take eight most essential technical tools, devices to an abandoned theatre, which they would they be?

Leatherman*, Maglite **, coffee, cigarettes, gaffa ***, Lukáš Valiska, a roll of the filter 201 C.T.B. – the first filter that I’ve ever used in my life – a good, adjusted profile, so I could make a nice sharp square. I would dare to any performance with this arsenal.

Is your job still a (craft) hobby for you?

It is work. I chose this job and I try to do my best. Professionally and with commitment to the cause. The concept of a job and hobby implies two different worlds, but for me it’s connected issues. I was able to sacrifice a lot to profession, I often took the risk. But the world and the field, in which I am in, have never failed me and made me happy.

The question that must come across at the end: What is beautiful light for you?

It’s a huge cliché. The long shadows of the setting autumn sun in our latitude. A boundary between day and night.

Questions were asked by T. Morávek and  F. Fabián (Institute of Lighting Design)

Translated from Czech by Jan Purkert

Explanatory notes:

* Leatherman – a brand of a folding multipurpose tool for engineering professions, usually includes pliers, screwdrivers, knife, file, scissors, etc.  depending on the type

Maglite ** – a brand  of professional battery lamps

Gaffa *** – an universal adhesive tape, indispensable in a theatre

Vincent Longuemare was born in France, where he studied theater at Paris VIII, continued at the INSAS in Brussels. He works as a lighting designer and set designer for contemporary dance and theater companies across the entire Europe, most recently, he was also dedicated to architectural and independent film projects. In the beginning of his career, he  had the opportunity to work with directors as  Philippe Sireuil, Michel Dezoteux, Jean-Claude Berutti,  later Robert Altman, Armand Delcampe and Josef Svoboda, Sosta Palmizi,  Marco Martinelli, Déja Donné company, Teatro Kismet or Marco Baliani. In 1996,  he moved to  Italy, where he teaches lighting design in Milan among other things and leads individual courses with its own pedagogical approach. He wrote several texts on poetics and dramatic nature of light.

He was awarded the “PREMIO UBU SPECIALE FOR LIGHT DESIGN” for his work as a first lighting designer in Italy. In 2009,  he started cooperating with the Institute of Lighting Design in Prague, where he chaired the first jury ever of Prize for lighting design within the festival Czech Dance Platform and led the first workshop for theatrical lighting designers. Since then, the Czech professional public has regularly the opportunity to become familiar with his distinctive approach to the field – close relation of light, space and drama / dance events. This “philosopher of light” has led several workshops in the Czech Republic and again sat in this year in the head of the jury for lighting design at the ČTP.

1) First question – could you list in five words, what is the essence of lighting design for you?

Darkness / Black

active eye

perception of space and body

contrast

technical knowledge

And if you should explain it more?

Whenever I start to teach a group of students, I use the same words to express the essence of lighting design: we are not able to see the light as such. We see it through the objects it affects. As it moves through the space, it enters into contact with objects and bodies. One of the best ways how to be able to perceive light is to realize its contrast with the darkness. That is the most basic contrast.  There is nothing and suddenly everything comes to life, because I see it standing out from the darkness. The sight captures and interprets light stimuli to us. We cannot think about light, if we do not think about darkness as well.

The way we see and perceive is the next step. A better ability of observation and perception is required from a lighting designer. A lighting designer must be able to transfer the shape, structure and the presence on the stage into the general visual scheme through the light. Space, props, costumes, body, but also the direction of looks of the eyes or the color of the skin – everything that happens on stage, must be seen and discovered.

The best way to achieve this is to create a contrast on the stage, which allows the spectator’s eye to perceive what is happening. From the smallest detail to the dramaturgical structure of the performance. It’s like creating a variety of visual perception and differentiation: to organize the visual field into a general structure and within that, to organize (to the viewer) the movement of the eyes.

Technical knowledge is, of course, indispensable, it allows you to work faster and more accurately. However, I believe that it is necessary that technical knowledge would be in the service of poetics and creation, not vice versa.

2) Are the lighting design in architecture and lighting design in theater the same professions? Do they have something in common?

They can be created by the same person, but it isn’t the same profession. Dance and theater serves to a world that is ephemeral, intangible and illusive. To a world that is built again and again, represented to the spectators and then disappears. Only some pictures will remain in the mind.

Architectural lighting is challenging due to the actual volume of material, of building, of something that is permanent. It has to be said here that a capable designer can be naturally able to achieve excellent results even in the architectural lighting. In the architectural lighting, one must take into account various constraints (rules, safety), durability of the material and the like. Architects, designers, engineers and firemen hold together and sometimes you have to respect the rules according to which the functionality has the priority over the “beautiful”.

3) How do you explain the fact that in recent years, there appears to be a growing interest in lighting and lighting design,  not only in the theater world, but also in architecture and other arts?

It seems that we find ourselves once again in an age, which is ruled by visual communication: Our fascination with images (in a broad sense of the word) is like a mother’s breast from which we greedily suck the milk of information. In the society, there is a distinctive need for veiling the world with images, to understand and explain the world with images rather than words. Some people seek the truth of history or politics through the images. Most of them creates images in order to hide what is not to be seen. Images that emerge from any kind of power to create a nice two-dimensional world. I assume that interest in the visual creation, by which we can control the world, means that we need technologies to build a vision of the world. Fortunately, I still believe that theater is a place for creation of images. It’s one of the few places where people meet in direct contact, face to face, where you can search for the truth of moments, the truth of humanity. It may be that not that much money flows through the theater world as in other fields of human activity and that protects it against industrial production of images, which has always only one goal: to make money and lie to people in order to maintain power.

The general interest in architectural and public lighting follows from industrial innovation and creation of new markets. There is always someone who wants a new toy or desire to be modern. I believe that we live in difficult times, and the light is associated with life, birth and faith, with the expectation of a new day, but also with the end. Maybe we seek hope through the light: will there appear better days in better light?

4) Can you describe a typical content of a day of a lighting designer?

When I was young, I was able to spend twenty four hours a day in the theater until I found the right way, there was no daily program, there were only questions, the stage in front of you and possible solutions. Currently, my program is divided into two main parts: the time I spend creating and inventing a lighting design at home in the studio, and the time I spend preparing and installing the lights before the performance. During the first phase, I go to the rehearsals, I discuss with set designers, costume designers and directors. I’m trying to get as much information as possible. I study the scenes or get inspiration from my life and the events around me. During the second phase of preparations, I usually spend twelve hours a day in the theater. I come at eight o’clock in the morning and leave around ten or eleven at night. During the technical preparations, I give a lot of time to building light changes. I try to make the lighting seem natural and live. I like a lighting design, which blends with the performance and helps to complete the story and the time is a single tool for creation of a light dramaturgy.

I mostly come to the theater as the first one- I enjoy the moment when I enter the empty, silent theater, night slowly sails away, technicians begin to come and smell with the first morning coffee – and I am the last to leave. I promised myself that I will be a sound engineer in my next life – the last one who comes and first one who goes.

5) Your main fields are a theater lighting and set design. When you create a scene, do you imagine it already lighted, or do you invite colleagues to help you to create the light design?

I have started dedicating myself to the set design about ten years ago. I was partly inspired by those  morning moments when you enter the empty silent theater. The space in front of you it is not yet burdened by any human activity, and you can fully perceive it. I was also dissatisfied with the approach  to the production of scenography. It was annoyed by a general practice of artists who ignore the individuality of space and just builds and builds, inundate the space with walls, structures, props. I have always had a feeling that uniqueness of the space has to be respected when creating performances. Makers of stage sets should be focusing on  looking for ways how to work with it instead of overfilling the area. I believe that in every performance there are direct relationships between bodies, voices, eyes and space as such. This mutual interaction between individual elements should be searched for and consolidated  during the creation of each performance. Light can also be the structural element for building “architecture” of space. When creating a stage set, I  closely work with the director, I use all the actions and movements, which are  contained in the performance. I start with lighting, then I define the spatial layout and the invisible lines in which the voltage flows, I assemble all elements of the performance so they correspond in best way with the already created lighting.

So far,  I haven’t had the opportunity to see  my stage set be lighted by someone else. I think they invite me to do the set design and lighting design also for the reason that to the production would  save money!

Performance  Capuleti e I Montecchi in Royal Opera of Wallonia(Source: http://www.donizettisociety.com/Pastproductions2010/2010ICapuletiLiege.htm

 6) It is important for you to work with someone who you know you have positive experiences with or do you ever take a risk and enter into cooperation with a for you unknown director, choreographer or company?

I’m doing both. I actually think that the biggest risk is when you work long time with the same director. There is deep trust among you, you work already very quickly, but then there may be a situation when you don’t discuss together the project. He knows that you’re sitting there somewhere in the dark, trusts you fully, doesn’t have to explain how he works and then may come the moment when you loose your way.

On the other hand,  I constantly try to pay attention to  young companies that don’t have the money yet. It is very important for me to maintain a relationship with the younger generations because they perceive the world very differently than I do, and obliges me to pose questions, how to create the visual part of the performance so that it would respect and resonate with their perception of the world. Experimenting with creation of images that would be meaningful for the younger generation is easier than, say, experimenting with opera. You need to look for a simple and inexpensive solution and to be a realist. I think it is important to return to the simplicity, to the craft: to use eyes, mind, soul and hands – let them talk and create. Handicraft skill as opposed to the “factory”.

7) How much are good communication, mood and atmosphere in a creative team essential for the quality of a performance? Do you agree that sometimes one works better under pressure?

Unfortunately, some directors and actors think so. Personally, I believe that the need to work in a tense atmosphere has more to do with the need to have control over actors and other members of the creative team than the actual creative process.

I think that the right working atmosphere or mood should not be characterized as stress, verbal aggression or need to push someone into something. It should rather be an issue of a creative urge. You know that you want something and you are looking for ways to achieve this. The working process requires concentration and awareness that you are responsible for organizing every minute so you could achieve what you want. It’s artistic, creative tension, not the senseless selfish behavior that we see on many stages. Narcis has not died yet.

8) Nick Moran writes in his book “Light design for theater, concerts, exhibitions and live events” that lighting designers often find themselves in a position where they function as a filter for tension between the director, set designer and costume designer. What is your opinion?  

I think that lighting designers have a good position in a team. Firstly, because they are often hidden in the rear in the dark. They perceive the tension in the creative process on stage, but they keep their distance. It is not unusual that a director comes to sit up to me to the lighting desk during rehearsals to ask me what I think about specific scenes or situations. It’s probably because lighting designers work with eyes, understand what is happening and they can have a better general view than the director, who spends most of his time down on the stage, and therefore he may sometimes cease to perceive the overall scene. When one finds out that the set design or costumes are done poorly, there is nothing much to be done in most cases, a lighting designer has an advantage in this. Convenient lighting can help the ugly looking sets or a bad actor (by means of  hiding him in the dark). A lighting designer can adjust his design to the scene to help the director with his intention. I have noticed that if there is a problem in dramaturgy, there is a problem for the lighting designer as well. A lighting designer has trained observation, is capable of an overall view, sees everything that happens on stage, how things evolve and change, and notices places where there  is a problem. He has to proceed very gently and subtly and try to remove the disharmony, even if it means a change, and adapt his original intention to what is taking place on the stage. A good scene emerges in harmony of all elements that are present on the stage. I always say to myself that lighting is as a good sauce: it mingles all the flavors into one.

9) We live in the European culture that was influenced  by Christianity for centuries. Our work is often unconsciously influenced by the environment in which we live. Do you think that it would be hard for a European lighting designer to work, for example,  in Asia?

When I worked in Japan, for instance, I had to learn the symbolism of colors, which is completely different from ours. For example, the color that symbolizes the spring in Japan is the color of cherry blossoms. This pink may seem dim to us, because the color of spring is bright yellow, green or orange for us. But I think that anyone can adapt to these cultural specifics. Rather, it can be hard to get used to the different organization of work. Almost all cultures of the world are available to us for several generations, although in superficial honeycomb of  images and words: if you want to do your job well, you have to have an open mind, go to the streets and watch and watch until your eyes will cry with fatigue.

10) Do you use some kind of symbolism, characters in your work, or do you work instinctively?

It’s a big fight between intuition and knowledge. Once you begin to think that you know something, you can be a goner in the next moment. At the same time, it is the reason why people want to work with you. They believe that you are good and you know all the solutions. If you start thinking about yourself that you have the knowledge and solutions, you start to repeat yourself. Some of my colleagues  do  the same design already for twenty five years. This may be convenient to some directors and productions, because they know what they can expect. However, I believe that each performance is a new experience and therefore we should look for new ways and opportunities. In this conflict, I choose intuition, groping in the dark and discovering the light is much more fun. I don’t mean that in the morning I go to the theater and say to myself, “so how we do it tonight?” For me, groping in the dark means a research and study of new possibilities, preparation. Then I come to the theater with a clear vision and definition of what I want to do.

11) The use of conventional halogen resource consumes large quantity of energy. Currently, the trend is the search for new, more environmentally friendly sources. Do you think that we can expect any radical changes, such as an improved and cheaper LED source, in this direction in the future?

I think it is good to learn the distinction between what may be beneficial and what is just an empty ideology in the context of the modern trends. I assume that the industry has its own reasons for such a strong bond with ecological views. It probably has something to do with the need to restore industry and ecology can be a good investment move, especially if public finance is used to it. The technologies currently assume dominant place in our lives. New technological products appear constantly on the market.  Over the last twenty five years, there appeared on the scene new highly sophisticated lighting consoles, moving lights, lamps producing more light using less energy and so on, so we are enchanted with the ideal of never-ending evolution. But is it necessary?

In my opinion, the best for theatrical lighting are halogen bulbs, they look good on the skin and costumes, they have a good temperature and color, shine clearly, they are versatile. I would never use the LED source to light the face. LED sources are not yet a suitable product for theatrical or opera stage. They can be used for architectural lighting or live events, where it’s more about the effects than about the quality of light. I am sure that the LED is going to improve in order to endorse global environmental beliefs, but most technologies, which production is costly, are doomed to poor utilization. To sum up the answer to this question: when creating a lighting design, always try to pick from what is available to you, sometimes it can be easier than you think.

Most of the big light shows, which I saw, hid their emptiness and creators of these shows just stirred up the air to make people think that something was happening. In my opinion, this is the problem with the most large light shows, and it could be the first step towards ecological thinking: let’s use only what we need for our concept and technical documentation immediately become thinner.

12) What do you think about the quality of new light sources (LED, electroluminescents, laser, video, etc.), will they determine the new aesthetics of lighting design?

As I noted in my previous answer: there will always be someone who wants to be more modern than you and will want to bring something new. Technology is a very interesting area of ​​interest. You have to be careful that you don’t use it only technically, but try to understand how and when to use it so it would serves you during the performance to create poetry, humanity and beauty. To create an authentic aesthetic experience. In practice, you can loose a lot of time with a sophisticated technology and discover that it just says, “Hi, I’m laser.” Or ” Hi, hi! I’m the new video projector. “

Sometimes I use new technology in my work, but I find out that something is wrong in their basic concept. New technologies are presented as intelligent machines for that the most people use them to do what they are programmed to as such: for special effects or projections. And nothing more.

Video projections are currently very fashionable. This is a great tool, but very few people know how it can be used in art to create a real aesthetic experience. When you start to use these machines for a special purpose, you have to realize that it will cost you  a lot of time and effort before you achieve what you want. Once again, it’s not a question of technology, but the way one works with them.

13) There is only few lighting designers and technicians in the Czech Republic, who have studied this subject, and if so then  abroad, because  there is no such a field of study here. Their route to the theater was complicated. You’ve graduated from school that was focused on lighting design. Which was your way to the theater?

I guess I was lucky. My girlfriend wanted to be an actress, so it seemed natural to me that I would do the lights during her talent exams. Without any knowledge of theater lighting, I passed the talent exams  at the theater school in Brussels. Not only that I was accepted to my surprise, but they opened first year of the field of lighting design in the same year.

Only after I left school I realized that I actually don’t know anything about the real world of theater, which was of course far away from the position of a successful young man in school. My first light design was really stupid. It looked as if I didn’t respect at all that something was happening on stage, that there were some actors, costumes, etc.. I became a technician in a real theater, I learned from others, I opened my eyes and mind, I learned a lot during tours and one day I found that I was able to help and give advises to others during creation of a lighting design. I was ready.

14) Then you started to teach lighting design, and have created your own methodology. What are the main principles?

I have always thought that there are two main ways of learning: positive and negative. The positive means that you learn what you are being taught and what you get. The negative means that you  learn from what you’re missing, from what haven’t been said to you or not explained, from what you have to try and find out (tours are a great school).

My phone rang late in the night two months ago. It was representatives of one dance group who organized a kind of showcase of new dance troupes, and wanted me to come, discuss and evaluate the work of dancers and choreographers. I told them that I wasn’t a choreographer, but they insisted that I would come, and even offered it to me for a fee. So I arrived, I was still a little worried about what intelligent things I might  say to them and when I watched the first choreography I realized that they were facing the same problems as students of lighting design: they don’t see; they cannot articulate what they see; they start something and don’t develop it further; they don’t follow their thoughts and intuition; they don’t trust their movements; they don’t know how to name what they do; they have ideas, but do not know how to translate them onto the stage; they are not able to fully loose themselves in the creation, slipping to superficial interpretations.

To sum it all up in a few words: the learning method, which I have developed over the years, I recently started  naming  as “Active eye” and it is based on the art of watching, naming and creating your own language of production. I always start the class with an exercise for the acquisition of visual perception and for the development of the ability to express what we perceive visually. In explaining the theory of lighting design, I’m very careful, because it is a complex of theories of optics, physics, imagination, and the like. I always try to add a bit of theory to practical exercises so the theory and practice would be showed together. Students learn the theory through their own perception on the stage, through practical interaction and use of materials. It is important that everything is happening before their eyes. Then we stop, we discuss the theory and then repeat the exercise again.

15) And which kind of self-education in the field of lighting design would you recommend?

Self-education is an everyday activity. Go out, forget yourself, breathe deeply and images will come to you from the outside world and later you find that you naturally begin to develop new associations with shapes and colors. Watch movies, browse the books, comics, watch the sky and then name what you have seen and felt. Sit to the Internet and search for other materials and inspiration. And then try to follow the idea.

16) You use reflective surfaces in many productions. Have you been somehow influenced and inspired by the collaboration with Josef Svoboda?

No, the main inspiration for the use of reflective surfaces was my childhood. My father was a craftsman working with glass and mirrors. To get to my room in the night, I had to go through his workshop, which was full of mirrors. Under the full moon, it was a magical experience, daydreaming. I love the reflected light – this “filtering” relieves us from direct impact of the resource. It’s rather a more cinematic way of working.

17) Who was Svoboda as a person and what kind of a set designer he was?

I had the rare opportunity to work with Svoboda on several productions in Belgium and I must say that I always appreciated his idiosyncratic production full of crazy visual technologies. His world was full of special rules and logic (even Czech beer had to be hidden by the technicians in boxes). Sometimes I wonder what he would have been able to do with modern video technology.

When you become famous and have a lot of projects, it may happen that you are doing too much and somehow you start recycling good ideas or simply getting into the stage where you do not have time to transform intuitive ideas into some form of the project. Later on, I became more interested in the light and his style alienated me, but I was young, and maybe I wanted to define.

18) What you are working on now and what do you want to pursue in the near future?

Currently, I have two main lines of work: the first is the theater, I prepare a performance about the birth of things. It is dedicated to very young children. During the show, we ask simple basic questions: what was the first light, how it got to the earth, why there is darkness and how we fight against the darkness. Small children are great, because they believe in the magic of the theater, while it is difficult for an adult spectator. The second direction of my work is currently focused on opera, I am dedicated to the design for two works by Hindemith: opera Sancta Susanna and ballet Nobillissima Visione, in collaboration with conductor Ricardo Muti. Both works are very demanding for me, because they require a very classic design. Then there comes the trilogy by Verdi: La Traviata, Trovatore and Rigoletto. A crazy project, which is a response to the current crisis of Italian opera: one opera that is performed every day. One space and three different lightings!

19) In April, you were at the festival Prague Czech Dance Platform, as a chairman of the jury in the category for the Best Lighting Design. What do you think about the awards for lighting design? Can be the lighting design evaluated in the context of contemporary dance theater? It is possible to objectively evaluate a lighting design in this area​​?

I live in a country where no such prize is awarded. Only just five years ago, they decided to make a special award for lighting design and instead of giving it to a Italian lighting designer, I got it. Funny is that I got an award for a performance in which I almost did not use any lighting, but I built a scene – something like a bunker, in which in the stage and the audience were hidden in order to reach the right darkness that I needed for the performance (it was all about the dark ). Actors use flashlights in it!

After I got the price, two companies contacted me just because I was awarded. They were the worst two production on which I’ve ever worked. What I mean is that when you receive an award, it doesn’t mean that you have achieved an objective or you did anything special. Rather, it means that you have to start again from the beginning to stay alive!

I think that the lighting design is still a very underappreciated professions, while in my opinion, the stage design is a profession, for example, that is on the contrary overrated and awarding prizes could be beneficial in this regard for the lighting design community.  Light creates the world and can really help the performance. Especially in the time, when such an emphasis is paid on visual aspects. Lighting is very helpful to the dramaturgy of a performance. Creating images with the help of light allows you to make denser all the elements of a performance without using words.

But back to the evaluation. It’s a hard task and is even harder to be objective, but I think it’s possible. Simply because a lighting design is a language that has its own grammar and vocabulary, its own means of expressing the concept of aesthetics and ideas, dumb language, which is able to describe and finish the narration of atmosphere, feelings, moods or architecture.

20) You led a workshop in Prague for the third time, so you have some experience with Czech students. What are Czech students in comparison with, for example, Italian students?  

This is a complicated question. When I came to teach in Italy, I found that many courses are organized by an association that was just about to get national or regional financial support, not an actual teaching program. So I found myself in front of unmotivated students who did not want to learn anything and were not ready to work. The best group I ever led in Italy, a group of Romanies from the outskirts of Naples, which is known as one of the largest drug markets. Those people could not write, but in two weeks, they were able to prepare such a good technical structure and accomplish the theater like no other. However, after they had the opportunity to show themselves off once, they disappeared. Prague students are much better prepared in comparison with the Italian ones. Both groups of students in Prague were different.

The group of students, which I led in Prague last year, had definitely wider cultural horizons than the group I led here three years ago and that created on obstacles during some exercises at the same time. But it was a very good group. I’m sure that they learned something at the workshop and left with a head full of images. I’ve had it like that.

21)  How does such a workshop takes place under your leadership?

It depends on the group, the number of participants, their level of knowledge. I always “test ” them in the first hours to see what the knowledge level the participants of the workshop have. Then we deal with the relationship between space and light, adopting the ability to learn by observation – we practice concentration on any kind of  information that comes to a light designer from the stage: silence, words, music and the like. It’s amazing how much you can build from scratch, I think that the whole ability of imagination is about this. Through these processes, we get to know the main aspects of lighting design language, we discuss four main qualities of light (direction, intensity, color, dynamics) plus one extra – contrast. The strange thing is that when we talk about the paintings, we’re talking about something intangible, but sometimes when we create them, they become tangible, solid and truly material.

Pavel Kotlik was awarded by the prize for production of Found and Lost by  Charlotte Öfverholm, a dance choreographer of the  dance association VerteDance. 

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What is it like to receive an award for lighting design?

It’s a pretty satisfaction to certain degree, at the same time, there is a lot of feelings. And they are all super!

Do you think that the staging of Found and Lost deserved the prize or did you have another favorite?

I am completely satisfied. In the same season, I prepared a production of How much desire weight? for the same company and that is a performance for which I don’t have to be ashamed of, but Lost and Found is a cleaner, more compact in my view.

It seems that you’ve got the prize a little bit at your home ground, in the Ponec theater, where you work as a chief technician, where  the  VerteDance regularly performs and where the prize itself was handed over.

As I said, it’s satisfaction, because in fact it must have been the devil in it not to get the price one day! (laughter, pause) when I had so many opportunities. As Petr Voříšek says, this is the prize for longtime merits and so the price went to me this year.

At the time when the price for lighting design still wasn’t officially awarded, you have won recognition for the performance Last step forward by Slovak dancer Jan Viňarský. How would you compare these two awards?

Now I cannot judge, because the Last step forward has been played already several  years and it’s a performance rehearsed in detail and tested over time. In contrast, the Lost and Found is just over a year old, so these performances can be compared after, say, other 8 to 10  years.

I rather perceive it that it was a first great step forward for me. At the time of the Last step forward, I was much younger professionally as a designer so I had more courage and I ignored what anybody would think about that.  A significant part of the Lost and Found was created by a choreographer who, of course,  has an elaborate lighting design. Charlotte Öfverholm is much more experienced than Jaro was at that time.

How do you view the actual evaluation of artistic professions?

Certainly, it is very important. And furthermore nice! But generally, I have some troubles with it. Even though it has no financial prestige, her prestige in the community remains. And especially in this way, any price makes our work visible to the outside world. I mean just the rest of the theater, directors, choreographers, production managers. Finally after years, it becomes apparent that this field even exist and most importantly that it really is worth attention.

How would you look at the work of your colleagues as a potential juror?

I am an autodidact, so I don’t even know which criteria I should choose and for what give points. I see as the most important that the performance should form a whole. Light, sound, scene should work as streams that merge into a single stream, from which a river arises. Simply, that there be sufficiently strong inflow of light.

When you are, as you say, an autodidact, what was your way to the theater and lighting?

I started in 1996 at the Řeznická  theater. I got interested in Theater pilgrimage at the Střelecký Island and on Kampa Island. They were made by Forman Brothers, Eva Holubová, Václav Koubek, Buchty a loutky and many others. It fascinated me so much that I stopped learning to be a carpenter and decided to join the theater.

And what was the initiation experience, when you said to yourself, “Yes, I want to do the  lights!”?

I remember that quite accurately. It was Na voru Theater of Frederika Smetanová,  there was a French lighting designer there. And I watched how it worked. I remember that it was amazing to see what you could do with lights. Much, much more than I had previously imagined. But it fascinated me most that he studied at a college in France and graduated from the lighting of PAR. It was absolutely dreamy for me. And so it struck me clear at that moment.

I had been attracted to the lights already long time. As I mentioned, I worked in the Řeznická Theater at that time. It worked there so that everyone did everything. For example, we dismounted the scene, took away old scenery, brought in new, erected all, rehung lights, rehearsed, played the performance. I very often managed it technically by myself, it depended on the complexity of the production. In 1996, this was the standard  Řeznická  Theater. A completely classic in a small theater. The technology was manipulated by one person.

The Theater in Řeznická is a different type of a theater than the Ponec Theater, what was your shift from drama to dance?

The Prague Chamber Ballet. I worked there from 1999 with Daniel Tesař and later with Filip Šamalík. We were managing their performances and tours from the technical side. I learned the craft there. One can say that I was “educated” by Daniel there. He was very close to the ballet, he even worked as an editor for the Radio Classic at that time, had a good track of classical music. So I first met with what can be called a lighting design, and it was only a small step from there to Ponec Theater. School tours were great, which was being used regularly and mainly not only in Bohemia, so this can be a lot to learn.

Prize for lighting design was awarded to you for performance Vertedance, in which your wife dances as well. How this personal and work aspect at the same affects your joint work?

Verte is three of us, Tereza Ondrová, Veronika Kotlíková and me. It is set so from the very beginning that the girls dance and I am with them as a technician, lighting designer, lighting electrician.

Do you then consider yourself to be a full member of the group?

Definitely, it has been always counted with me and counts for the next production as well. I was at the kickoff of all performances. These productions come into existence on the basis of joint and intense work. From the very beginning of thoughts, idea  and forming  the style of work.

Can we therefore say that this intense and extra long-standing cooperation with a lighting designer is actually unique?

Yes, but I’m trying very intensely and closely to cooperate with other groups, no matter whether it is a family collaboration. Of course, the funny thing is that we deal at home with children and then with work. I take it at the same time as a bonus and a handicap of this type of profesního and human encounter.

Is there any other key to the issue, how you approach individual choreographies?

Each choreography is a unique encounter. That is the big advantage over the drama, where the text is firmly fixed, to which you must stick, the situations are firmly fixed in space and time, and very often in light as well. The dancing pool is much freer in this regard and provides many more options.

But this is beside the point, the main point is to suck people, the energy that’s in it – and I’m trying to get some kind of an expression of the atmosphere.

The lights are basically a servant of a performance where actors, dancers should be primarily seen. There are, however situations in dance where it isn’t necessary to see all the details, but only the whole of the scene, or vice versa to suppress the whole and to highlight a gesture. There is a limited amount of those options, how to lighten actor is actually really simple. But interesting are the moments when it is necessary to change the angle of view – for instance to select one of the possible directions of light based on the direction of the movement of a dancer. Only thanks to intensities, usage of the correct type of a light source and direction, it is possible to let others disappear and “pull” the vital part. It is not necessary to use additional special light.

You have your style, your own language, that you use and repeat? You are very often associated with intense color lighting.

I very much like to use fields and an evenly lightened whole of the stage. The most distinctively floor, front, back, side. This is the basis for me, I believe that dancers are best seen in the direction of the light from the side on a tripod or in the towers, usually at the level of the head. Furthermore, the light from the side models body well.

The direction and angle of light is just one thing, but the coloring will help to the production more. I am very often too descriptive, which means that I am trying to add color to the given situation as I perceive it. The key to all this is actually simple: for the sad atmosphere, I choose dark colors,  for a cheerful one happy colors. One old lighting electrician’s advice is that when a water goblin creeps out, use the green color, when the devil then red. (laughs) It works just in the same way, only I just created my own law. There’s a zero, showing the sort of “a normal situation”. This zero may not be used in the show at all costs. It serves as a sort of a springboard from which to I determines to myself what’s hot and what’s cold. It doesn’t have to be always blue and orange, it can be completely different colors, but they always stand  in contrast.

This means that a spectator can consider the pinkish white light to be white after an hour presentation… That is something I like and I am heading towards it.

So what is the “zero”, the center the case of the Lost and Found show?

243 Lee Flouroscent 3600K ** from the company LEE filters, that is the zero, which is, however, not used there.

So you define the “zero” as a springboard – as the basis from which you seek another color?  

Exactly so, and I proceed further actually quite intuitively. In the case of the Found and Lost, the “side lights“ are from PC 1Kw. There is 241 Lee Flourescent in the lower lights and warm 245 Half Plus Green in the upper ones. There is no 243, even though it was my “zero” at the beginning. In these colors, there is a dark green inserted into the PAR‘s. Par is stronger as you know in comparison with the PC, this means that the light gives warmer impression. The cold floor is used, for example, in the scene where the mother dies. This scene is so the coldest one, it’s such a dying light.

In the case of the Lost and Found, I got a request from choreographer Charlotte Öfverholm for hot and cold color, so I gave it to her. Only in shades of green. Red impacts there as a “work light” and on the other hand, profiles with gobama gives the nonwhite impression. ***

Many lighting designers talk about the stage as a canvas on which they draw their images. Would you agree?

It is a playground where you can play. It is not a canvas, the lights itself don’t exist. You can dance alone, but it’s stupid, you can play the music to yourself and it’s pretty good, but to turn on the lights to yourself, only   few fools as us really do that. I disagree and do not think that theater is like a canvas. It can be a canvas within a story, but it does not work like that as such.

Among the current staging trends, there is not only the inclusion of live music and musicians directly on the stage, but even lighting electricians also sometimes “play”. How do you perceive this?

A lighting technician is the captain on the bridge, who cannot leave the ship. I see it in the way that I am a sort of a helmsman who needs to bring the crew and cargo, respectively viewers (laughter), safely to the port. It is also one of the reasons why until now I didn’t know what it is like to thank the audience. I have already the premier behind me already. I think I chose a very nice situation where people thanked in a standing position at the performance Simulante Bande. It was a very beautiful and powerful experience in my life, comparable with the prize for lighting design. I have to say that the prize just gave me a certain permission to penetrate the stage.

You try hard so the live lights in each performance emanate from the moment at the scene, so they work with that given space?

Reprise – everything is here figured out already, changes programmed, it’s done in a kind of way. Actually, it’s just about to find the moment again and repeat it. But it’s damn hard in the theater. Of course I always try to find it again, so it work out, and of course, there are situations where it wouldn’t work out. And that’s what I enjoy most at the theater – mistakes, people make mistakes. That’s what makes theater to be theater.

It is also related to the fact that if I do the introduction in different space, I have extract maximum out of it. The Ponec Theater is a kind of a base, clean space for me. But every other house offers something new. Certain specifics, somewhere a column, portal, some limitations always lurk. It is important to sensitively combine what is happening on stage at the moment and what I have prepared.

Additional question – if your light a performance, do you prefer to control the panel manually with submasters or with the programmed time through the Go button? ****

Depends when, depends what. It is 50 to 50 at home. I light some performances from the GO, some by the hand. I usually have GO ready, but I blend them manually, I use some of them on time because of the timing with the audio and the like. I sometimes use submasters, for instance, where I have individual fields, which I then combine live according to what is happening on the stage.

You say “home” and think PONEC, your home stage. Do you see this as an advantage that you know every corner, brick, extension cable there?

Yes and no. I don’t know, how I would better answer this question. I’m at home in the Ponec Theater, I enjoy the space. It is possible to work there very well. It is not defined anyhow, because it’s basically just empty space.

How the experience of Prague Dance Festival does enrich you professionally?

It’s always very interesting to meet someone of the world importance.

The festival is visited by large teams that can afford great lighting electricians, great lighting designers, and it is quite nice to see the craft in such high quality. At the same time, I am pleased to discover that we have nothing to be ashamed of. I don’t do the craft below average.

And regions? Does the Prague Dance Festival tests the quality of the local technical equipment and technicians with its trips?

Regions are a challenge for me. Today, the locals make fun of me already. I am known for trying to make full use of theaters so the rake must be remodeled, space change, vacuum-clean, clean up, rehang (laughs). I see it as a mission and it’s nice that the Prague Dance Festival covers back quite nicely. By that I mainly mean the support in the form of materials, transportation, background, etc.. When someone works only for himself, he cannot be so much naughty.

Of course, the situation in the region changes. Those guys, and it doesn’t matter whether they are 60 or 25, see some quality of the work. How the lights can be used in a different way. We visit the regions for many years with this festival and it is quite interesting to disturb the taboos that they have. For example, that the PAR is used only to big beat and doesn’t belong to the theater. Today, they already have PAR’s in the houses, because they saw how they can be used and they use them in a different way as well. They know how to work with a profile, floodlight, and the barndoors are quite nice (laughs). That filters are quite fine and that it pays off to  change the position of the lights. Of course, sometimes it goes and sometimes it does not.

It makes me happy to go back to places where we were and look for things that I once deliberately left there. One time a screw hook, barndoors, color frames, ground tripod. I felt then that I had my share on that when a ground tripod started being used in a sleepy hollow. However, some places are bulletproof.

One can feel from this answer that things are changing for the better …

Something has changed everywhere, and definitely for the better, but it’s slower than I’m getting old (laughs). I thought that the change would still be faster, the generation would alter and new people would come. This is often done, but so many sunk into oblivion as well as the previous generation. Moreover, I feel that some resist the technology too much, it brings an extra work in their eyes. It follows from that to me that they don’t enjoy the work, and that’s a pity.

Is there a way of self-education that you would recommend to your colleagues?

Of course. Go to Brno, educate yourself there! (laughs)

Do you think of any particular place in Brno?

Yes, BA of the stage technology at the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts. Which is unfortunately the only place in the Czech Republic where you can do something like this. The Institute of Lighting Design is indeed great, but it’s not a substitute of the highest level.

In regard to your career – is there any way that you went through and that could be followed?

Everybody has his way. As I said, I see myself primarily as a man of theater, this is such icing on the cake, my profession. I have long worked with the lights, but I didn’t see myself as a lighting designer. For a long time, I hadn’t even seen a lighting designer, there always had been someone who somehow did it –a director, set designer, lighting electrician, the co-operation worked in these different combinations. But there was no one who cared only about lights and at the same time had the power to change and determine the form of the performace.

What is the difference between theatre maker, lighting technician and lighting designer?

A theatre maker is someone who loves theater, does theater, creates theater. Lighting technician is someone who lights in the theater. A  lighting designer is someone who creates a particular light design in a specific project. A lighting technician can become a lighting designer as it has happened to me. A designer is a creator, he is the one who gives the soul to the lights.

If I understand well, a lighting technician is a craftsman who can work with the material, technology, whereas a lighting designer simultaneously sees beneath the surface of things, into the depth of a performance and creates on the base of all this?

I do not know if he always sees / feels, but he is there to give the soul to lights. In my case, when I participate on the creation of performances, there is nothing more important at that moment, only the theater. But in doing so, I have to stand firmly on the ground, mainly because I love my wife and kids.

Questions were asked by T. Morávek and  F. Fabián,  editor  A. Hejmová (Institute of Lighting Design)

Pavel Kotlik (* 1973), lighting technician, lighting designer and technical director of the PONEC theater. He was dedicated to lighting from his youth, he passed smoothly from school to the theater, first as a theater technician: therefore he also refers of himself as a theatre maker rather than a lighting designer. As many others like him, he is an autodidact in his respective field, although he was influenced by many persons. In the professional community, he is known as a tireless creator of visual compositions on the stage – only few can paint surfaces and accentuate details as he does. He is a permanent designer of the VerTe dance company and basically the Ponec Theater as well. In 2012, he won the award for lighting design for performance “Lost and Found” (VerTe dance and choreographer Charlotte Öfverholm).

Prize for lighting design – In the interest of  representation and setting standards for inventive, creative work in the field of lighting design, the Institute of Lighting Design awards regularly the Award for lighting design within prestigious home shows or festivals of dramatic arts. This award is understood as a step towards a wider social perception of lighting design as a field largely determining the tone of the scene, including the implementation of new technologies into the contemporary art.

Evaluation of the light components in performative arts is understood as a prestigious event in the field – whether for the individual creator, or for the culture of techno-artistic side in general. Declaration of a certain quality can be a motivation as for individual lighting designers in their work, as an incentive for broader discussion of the professional community.

Although the Institute of Lighting Design ensures impartiality, professional quality and authority of the jury / juror, (and therefore foreign experts are also invited), does not perceive the conclusion of the evaluation as indisputably correct, but rather as a stimulus for wider discussion on the topic, a milestone in the field for domestic venues or a possibility of comparison with foreign standards

Glossary:

side lighting – direction of the light from the side, placed on a tripod or in the towers, usually at the level of the head.

Lee 243 fluorescent 3600K – color correction for tungsten resources converting temperature closer to the warm fluorescent lamp (3600K, Warm White). It is a centre between L241 and L245filters.

GO is a button of a lighting console, which triggers the automatic blending of light changes (or sequences thereof) through pre-set time. Especially by longer times, it always provides the same course and duration of changes, on the other hand, it can be perceived as mechanical, artificial, so operators often blend changes manually, which allows them to adapt the dynamics of changes to the actual situation.

I have heard that you originally studied physics,  but you were not good at mathematics.  How was it with your studies?

This is a nice introduction. Yes, after the high school, I went to study physics at university and I found out very soon that my mathematical knowledge would never be at a level that I could become a good physicist. And so I spent most of my study time working in a theatre at the university, also in Edinburgh, France and other places.

I finished the university, as the saying goes, “by the skin of my teeth.” Today, I probably wouldn’t  get away like that so easily.

What attracted you to the theatre, specifically to lighting?

My mother and her community theatre, sometime in my fourteens. They needed someone to help them with lighting. The man who was their lighting electrician

worked as a professor of mathematics at a local institute, smoked cigars and it was such a relaxed guy and it was amazing for me to work with him. In this theatre, the lights were controlled using manual resistance dimmers and he always came with his cup of coffee, chose the lever of dimmers, which was pulled halfway down, put  the cup of coffee on it, laid down on the couch smoking a cigar and just slightly before he had to make a change, he got up, drank coffee and moved the lever. That was amazing.

So it looked like a light and relaxed work in the beginning?

No, I didn’t think about it first as a job, I took it as an activity that is great.  I started thinking about the possibility that I could do it for a living in the middle of my studies. When I was about twenty,  I began to meet people who were dedicated to it professionally.  The technologies began to develop more  at that time, and that facilitated my choice.

My family would have probably not objected, but still I graduated the university, so I should have made my living at least by some kind of an office work: but I was thankful that I found a way to make a living, even if included climbing the ladder, dirtying my hands, playing with devices and their fixing. At that time, I focused more on technology and later I became interested in lighting design as such. At first, it was really more about how to make all things work, technology and the people with whom I worked.  I perceived the community of people around the theatre as a family, and it was a great feeling. We all had the same problems, we all worked non-standard working hours, we drank in the same bars and so on, and only later I started asking the question “why am I actually doing this job?”.

And your first “lighting design”?

I once worked in a warehouse of lights, I borrowed some and removed a chandelier in a pub in Hampstead, and instead of it, I hung up a part of a skyfolder (a mobile scaffold for hanging lights – Ed.) on chains, hung lights on it, attached two wires and homemade dimmers and I said to myself that it actually looked pretty good.  But what really brought me to the lighting design was a revolution in the form of smart (remotely controlled functions of sharpening, angular extent, colors etc. – Ed.) lights. It was a great thing for someone who was interested in the technology. I remember that when I first saw the use of these lights, when the scene illuminated by white light suddenly changed to purple, I thought that something similar must have been experienced  by the people of the early Renaissance, when they first saw the picture painted in a perspective: a completely different way of working.

Then you began to dedicate yourself  to it deliberately?

I didn’t know at that time that to do this job doesn’t just mean to control the lights, but also the ability to communicate with the director and set designer, the ability to make contacts, to be able to think about the script and so on. I learned all this during the work with lighting designers – I had the opportunity to sit next to the best designers in the UK, Spain, Germany as the operator and to observe them as they learnt to use smart lights in their work, that was the best school for me. I had a chance to learn, not only the work with the visual aspect. Also it helped me to understand the internal politics of origins of a performance: the importance of understanding the text, intentions of a director and set designer, understanding the actors and their work, realizing that directors are often afraid of technology, just as they want to use it in their performances. Does that make sense?

Of course.  So the profession of a lighting designer is a combination of art and technical knowledge?

Yes, it’s both. If you are a sculptor, you need to know how to cut stone and what technology to use for it. You have to have great ideas and visions, but to make it happen, you have to master the craft. I think that the same can be said of the lighting design. I’ll give you an example: the play Danton’s death by Georg Büchner is performed in the London’s National Theatre with the stage design by Christopher Orama. Lighting design was made by Paul Constable. The scene consists of doors arranged in a semicircle with a gallery above them and windows with shutters above it. The windows are approximately six meters high and when they are open in the daytime scene, only one beam goes through them that creates a perfect shade of the windows on the scene. To achieve that, you need to know which source to use, where to place it exactly. That’s the side of the craft. But you also need to have an idea and it must be very good, because actors can work with those perfectly placed beams. You have to be aware of this by the construction of a scene, you have to explain this to the director – how, where and when the shadow will be used.

I guess it’s a lot about diplomacy, isn’t it?

I absolutely agree, it’s especially the art of communication, co-operation, to which also the craftsmanship is indispensable. A theatre performance comes into existence in a dependent cooperation of a director, set designer, lighting designer and his team, costume designer, choreographer, actors and many others. Each lighting designer should keep in mind that light is a part of the performance, and should be consistent with other components, with  their creators. A lighting design that is not able to respect this fact can never be functional.

As we spoke about the craft – what skills must be mastered by a lighting designer?

A friend told me years ago that a lighting design is fifty percent about lighting. Of course, it depends on what kind of performance you do and whether you have a team of people you can trust. I personally know many lighting designers, who don’t have to be too much concerned about the technical side of lighting, because they have a lighting team around them, to whom they trust. On the other hand, I know designers who are dedicated to the technological aspect of lighting to the details, they exactly know why to choose a certain type of equipment and how to use it.

Another important component of the work of a lighting designer should be the interest  in what is happening in the outside world, about what is happening in culture or politics. When somebody makes Shakespeare in the present day, he might want to use a parallel to the relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in the performance. A lighting designer also has to read the script and imagine according to the text what is going to happen on the stage. And that is an art as well. He should be able to work under pressure and know how to communicate in stressful situations with members of the creative team, yet in a slightly different way with each, must keep in mind a lot of information so he would be able to fix the problem most efficiently if it occurs.

There are many other things that should a lighting designer know, but when I sum it up, so the prizes for lighting design are constantly won in the UK by people who are well-read, educated and who are interested in what is happening around them, and this is what makes them masters of their field among other things.

Let‘s move now to the stage: How to recognize bad lights? Is it even possible to discern what is a concept and what a mistake?

For instance when the light attracts too much attention, or if you don’t see the actor’s face for most of the time, too much light reaching the eyes of spectators and so on – you perceive it negatively. But it often happens that the mistakes, which viewers notice and could be attributed to the lighting, have nothing in common with the work of the lighting team – an actor simply steps in the wrong place. We can blame him for that, but maybe we should blame ourselves for not being able to cope with the actor standing elsewhere. If we decide that we will be the servants of a performance, we should be able to respond in situations where the actor doesn’t do what he did the previous evening.

On the other hand, will spectators notice that the light coming through the window throws a shadow in one direction and the light coming through the window from the other side of the scene in another direction? That would have been possible only if there were two suns. When you look at the example of paintings from the period of classical painting, will you notice that the falling shadows are from multiple sources and that the spatial layout of shadows corresponds rather to the artist’s intent than reality? Personally, I genuinely don’t care whether someone will notice it in my work. But I remember that when I was an assessor at exams at the university, some students were criticized for “two suns” … So is it a problem for someone.

But if you look at it from an artistic point of view, it will depend on a opinion. It’s the same as asking whether a painting is good or bad.

You have many years of experience teaching lighting design today and Czech students. How you worked on people who attended a workshop in the Czech Republic?

I am glad that you asked me this question, because I thought about it. For example, I met with Thomas, who says of himself, that he is not good only a technician.  He shouldn’t be saying it about himself, because he is capable and qualified. You say it about yourselves as well and the same thing happens in the UK. A light technician should appreciate his skills. It often happens that when we get our knowledge not in a training course, informally, so we don’t respect it. One example from practice: a guy has long been working in the British National Opera who is definitely one of the best behind the lighting control desk. Glen is fast, accurate, and understands very soon what you want, almost as if he reads your mind, he isn’t nervous … No one taught him the job, he has learnt all by himself. But he doesn’t realize that he has specific skills, which he should appreciate, and expects that others can do at least the same as he does.

Otherwise, the group of people at the workshop made a very positive impression on me. People came here who, though they perhaps didn’t have extensive knowledge of lighting design and technology, were very interested in learning something new. It was also positive that a lot of women participated – I think that if there is a balanced proportion of men and women in the team, the work is more comfortable and is done in better quality.

The reason for your visit in Prague is the Czech translation of the book – mostly there are enough expert publications abroad. Why have you written your own, in what is this one better?

When I became a teacher at the university in my forties, I asked my colleagues what the profession of a university professor involves, and they replied “Well, teaching, writing books and research”. I said, “Well, first I will teach and write books and then you show me how to do research.” I wrote the book in the first place for students. My goal was to give them as much information as they need for the profession of a lighting designer. It was also the opportunity for me to clarify what all the light design means, to evaluate my existing practice and

experience, and so I said to myself “let’s have a look back and see if Nick has a something to pass on.”

I should not evaluate in what the book is better than the other ones. But the best books on lighting design that were published in the UK are already a little outdated. For example, Richard Pilbrow’s book is great, but there are interviews with people from the field in it that are already twenty-five years old. My book should replace the textbook on lighting design by Reid Francis, which is not bad at all, but is already outdated and not comprehensive enough.

The book also mentions Joseph Svoboda…

Yes, Josef Svoboda was a major phenomenon at that time, a visionary. He was able to create three-dimensional structures with light and mist, architecture of space directly above the stage. Concert shows profit   from this vertical effect still up to present days. He was a pioneer of new technologies, very inspirational magic of lights. It is perhaps the most famous stage designer, who perfectly complemented the scene and its atmosphere with light. Also, his “invention” – light Svoboda – is manufactured with certain modifications even today.

Today, we are beginning to discuss the relationship of the entertainment industry and ecology, the environment. Do you think that any successful large performance may be “ecological”?

The main idea of ​​the project “Greening the Theatre Round Table”, in which I participated, was to create an environmental performance that would maintain a high artistic value at the same time. It wasn’t about to create the most ecological performance, but thinking about the possibilities of environmental considerations in our profession. Currently, there is a large debate about the tungsten filament bulbs that aren’t environmentally friendly and that should be replaced with LED bulbs or discharge lamps.

On the other hand, I think that it would be more environmentally friendly if theaters stopped using bottled water than the ban of tungsten bulbs. I don’t mean that they should continue to use tungsten bulbs for lighting in the corridors and in the dressing rooms or for lighting of buildings. Let’s compensate them fluorescent lamps, but let’s be aware that they contain mercury and must be properly disposed of.

We cannot see the issues of sustainable development and ecology only in black or white. In this discussion, there is no single correct solution – tungsten bulbs are bad, everything else well – it doesn’t work that way.

If you could choose from aesthetic point of view between a tungsten lamp, LED, fluorescent and other sources, which would you choose?

Of course, the best of all resources is a tungsten lamp! But if I do a show somewhere,  where only 230V is available then I use LED. It depends on the purpose – the quality of tungsten lights is not very important for me when lighting musical productions, I use tungsten diffuse light and conventional lights for theatrical performances and if I had a big stage and a lot of money, so I would use LED lights.

The question that must be asked at the end: What is the beautiful light for you?

I was thinking about it during a holiday in Spain. We went one day for a walk in the morning. It was a few hours after the sunrise, azure blue sky… I thought, “What makes such fantastic light”? No artificial lighting, but only one brightly shining source – the sun and azure pall cover of the atmosphere around created a fantastic and precise ratio of key light and fill light. Such a harmony that was raved about by painters, photographers, filmmakers, and this is what we try so many times to transfer onto the stage.

For instance, it’s amazing to watch fire, a group of people around a fire, all the different shades of colors … I think of fire that shines brightly and simultaneously produces orange, red and yellow shades, and the fact that it moves it to life light source casts shadows. If you’re somewhere in the countryside in the middle of the night, so you have one source of light from one direction and everything else is plunged into darkness, and the contrast is wonderful.

Thank you for the interview, I originally promised only a few questions …

OK, time for a beer.

(Interview of 10.5 of  2010, interviewer  F. Fabian, Institute of Lighting Design)

Interview with Sergio Pessanha

At the occasion of the premiere of the Hell on Earth by Constanza Macras in Prague, I visited its court lighting designer, who is considered to be the best in Brazil and who collected many awards in Europe and America. From the dim labyrinth of the New Stage of the National Theater, I was led out by this nice and helpful man with an obligatory head lamp hanging on his neck. His view of what is or isn’t light design and how one can do it, clearly grows from the rich practical experience, not from the boundless theoretical considerations. Sergio’s view is clean and clear, as the material he works with.   

ART

Do you consider lighting design to be an art?

Well, that’s quite a tough start. I think it might be. For me personally, the light design is rather a way of expression than art. It gives me the opportunity to express my point of view, show my opinions and my feelings to what we work on.  Some will understand, some won’t. It’s a part of the communication process  with the rest of the team. I like team work, so I do theater.

Do you think that it’s possible to talk about a personal “handwriting” or style of a lighting designer? What is that?

Sure, you can talk about individual ways of thinking about light. The important thing obviously lies in the background of each of us, in his surroundings. For example, I’m from Brazil, I grew up in the heat and the sun. I cannot get rid of warm colors. I do what I can to do cool light, but I can’t. You can call it a style, but I think it’s something much stronger. Another important thing is how you learn to deal with light. When you work with a particular technique over a long period of time, you get used to its results and then you use it further on. Moreover, I believe that each lighting design is tailored to needs of the given performance. Each performance requires specific lighting, so actually I continually try to put aside something like the style. But yes, I think that a some kind of a style is ineffaceably stored in our heads, in our past, in how we see the world around us.

Do you think that the light and sound sides of a performance should be bound technically on each other?

I think they may be, but I do not know whether they should. Of course, they are deeply interconnected on the stage. When I hear some strong elements in music, I try to support them with light, but I don’t see the necessity for light and music to be technically bound. Cooperation of lighting and sound designer or composer can be very beneficial. Once I made such an installation in Hellerau in Dresden together with musician Lucas Marcier. We met personally only once. We spent enormous time talking about various things, even a little about the job, but not about technical side. And we have never met again. But it was great. We have established such a connection that we both knew what we wanted to do. I like collaboration, for that I don’t do many installations.

It usually works in the way that a lighting designer comes almost to the finished performance. Of course, that you consult the director or choreographer during rehearsals, but he usually comes last and only covers the performance “into the light.” What do you think about it?

That is, of course, primarily a question of money. I think that there is no other reason for than that it’s simply expensive to rehearse the lights in the theater space. If it was otherwise, everyone would be doing it and working with lights, sets and costumes during the creation of a performance, but I think just the happiest couple has the chance. Although this is a very luxury production, there are only maximally two weeks available for lights to us at the space. So usually everything’s all almost ready, including costumes and sets and you come up with your dream idea and suddenly everyone is behind you and says, “… and I’d rather do it like this” or “… and couldn’t we light it there” ? Suddenly, you have a group of “critics” from the team behind your that doesn’t have much to do otherwise and this is often my very fragile moment, because other people have different expectations and ideas and you see for the first time at that moment in reality what you have only imagined before. So it is a bit unfair, but I’m not complaining, it’s a part of the process of creating  a performance.

Do you use some presentation software that would give you a simulated scene with lights?

No no, I don’t use it. I think it’s rather a good tool for presentation to clients, production or director, but I prefer to use drawings. I really prefer working with my eyes for the viewer’s eyes, I think that no software can replace it so far.

TEACHING

In the Czech Republic and in Europe in general, there is only few art schools or other institutions that would systematically educate in working with light and people get to the job in many various ways. Which was yours?

It was quite natural. I am a graduated architect. And my way of looking at the space evolved gradually. In Brazil, I worked with architects who was doing the lighting for interiors and commercial spaces as were shopping moles for instance. That was my first encounter with the light. It was very technical, but it fascinated me, for example, what tricks can be done with light to keep people in a shopping center, how it is possible to create an environment with light that is less noisy, and so on. Then I got the opportunity to work as a set designer, which made me excited. There  is a problem with architecture that you are responsible for something that is going to stand there maybe 300 years. I grew up in the capital of Brazil, which is full of modern architecture, and I know very well how people can suffer because of someone’s artistic vision. Sometimes the buildings look good on paper or as models, but when implemented, issues arise, which were not thought about by the authors before. And they aren’t already there to deal with it, because they are having a drink in Copacabana. The set design is only temporary architecture. It exists only for the time being of a performance. And I moved further with light. I can build space that lives an intense life for some time, then I push the button, everything disappears in the dark and I can go to sleep in peace. I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but this temporariness produces a very intense feeling of satisfaction in me. For two hours, I can do anything as I feel it, but no one has to live in it after that.

Do you think that it is possible to study lighting design and is it needed?

This is a controversial question. Learning is always useful. On the other hand, one cannot expect to learn everything at school … I think the importance of the school is that it creates space for discussion. I often miss some kind of a feedback from the outside. In many countries, there are no critics  who would be able to critically evaluate a lighting design. It induces an emotion in them, but they can’t describe what kind of and how. A school has something to offer in this particular regard. It will give the people the opportunity to criticize, discuss and articulate their differing opinions. Also experimenting is quite difficult in the given professional conditions. Once someone is working on a performance, which has limited time and the thing must be done, he doesn’t have the opportunity to try a variety of lights, colors and their combinations. The school is also very useful for tests with different technologies and ways to handle it. I did such workshops with small children and it was absolutely amazing how inventive they were while using the light.

Do you think that perfect knowledge of techniques and technologies is important for the creation of a lighting design?

No. It can help, but it is important in reality what you do and how. You can use profiles, mobile projectors or lasers, but in the end it’s always the same principle: an object at the stage and the light source. It’s a kind of my motto, to which I constantly return. Maybe I’m a little conservative, but I always return back to the bulb and shadow.

What do you think about the ban on the sale of Edison filament bulbs in the European Union?

I must admit that I was quite upset. I’m not sure if that what we save on electrical energy will compensate that what we lose on the mental harmony. I tried to get home-saving lamps, but suddenly all happiness left me, and when I looked in the mirror I looked sick.

So you’re one of those who ran to the store to buy a basket full of classical light bulbs?

Well, I have a stockpile in the basement of my home…

SPACE

In what area do you like most to work?

I like indoor projects. I like control, I hate surprises during the performance. At the same time, I prefer a medium-size or smaller spaces as here on the New Stage. Maybe I can’t handle big ones, but it is simply difficult for me to work with them. I have a feeling that I have to do something monumental and that doesn’t suit me. Medium sized productions are also more comfortable because one travels well with them. Adaption to the other stage is more simple.

What do you think of the proscenium arch? Does have the proscenium arch / proscenium -stage space anything to offer space nowadays?   

In this regard, I have no preferences. I can work in a former factory converted into a theater space as well as in the Paris Opera. Of course, it requires a different approach, but I can’t say that I wouldn’t like to work with the proscenium arch, or that I need it. In Hellerau, we did opera and it was a nightmare. The whole space was white. Everything was visible. It was really difficult to do the lights, but furthermore, now it is on a tour and basically it isn’t possible repeat the design in  different space again. I like the space with a proscenium arch. All the technology is hidden and only the magic of theater gets on the stage. I know that many people say that this type of space is dead. I don’t know, I like him.

Questions were asked by Jan K. Rolník

Sergio Pessanha, an architect and lighting designer,  comes from Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, now he has been living more than 10 years in Germany and works worldwide as a lighting designer, especially for dance projects.

Sergio Pessanha cooperated as a lighting designer with many renowned artists, including extraordinary Japanese choreographer and dancer Saburo Teshigawara, or German-Argentinian choreographer Constanza Macras. Sergio Pessanha is considered one of the best lighting designers in Brazil.

He graduated in Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Brazil in 1983.

He worked as a set designer, lighting designer and technical manager with many different directors and choreographers from various countries. Among others, let’s mention EnDança, Eliana Carneiro and Maura Baiocchi (Brazil), Joao Fiadeiro, Angela Guerreiro and Rui Horta (Portugal), Maria Rovira and EL TEATRO FRONTERIZO (Spain), Alvaro Restrepo (Colombia), Los Denmedium and Vicky Cortés (Costa Rica) , Les Ballets C. de la B. (Belgium), Constanza Macras (Germany) and Saburo Teshigawara (Japan).

He participated in more than 150 international festivals with various dance and theater projects in more than 30 countries, in America, Europe and Asia.

He has led workshops on lighting design for example, Brasilian University, the University Estacio de Sá (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), the Teatro José de Alencar (Fortaleza, Ceará), Kampnagelfabrik (Hamburg, Germany), SESC (Sao Paulo, Brazil) and during the International Summer Theatre Festival in Hamburg, also in Kampnagel (Hamburg, Germany).

In 1991,  he was got an award of the NEW YORK TIMES for best lighting design of the year in New York.

He lives in Germany and works worldwide.