Winter Journey

Light­ing design for Hoi Polloi’s fes­ti­val pro­duc­tion of Win­ter Jour­ney, writ­ten and directed by Alec Duffy, pre­sented by the under­groundzero fes­ti­val at Per­for­mance Space 122.

With the help of a pianist and singer, Duffy explores the songs of the work and strives to unlock the mys­tery of why the piece held his father, and so many oth­ers, in thrall.  Deeply per­sonal but also highly enter­tain­ing, Win­ter Jour­ney offers a fresh take on the tra­di­tion of the ‘con­fes­sional mono­logue,’ with Duffy lead­ing the audi­ence down lush and unex­pected pathways.

A liv­ing room bound by hang­ing boxes of minia­ture trees is filled with warm golden light, as the Nar­ra­tor, the Pianist and the Wan­derer lec­ture and demon­strate to the audi­ence. The Narrator’s deeply per­sonal story takes over once and again, as the cool win­ter night out­side intrudes into the inte­rior in the form of shafts of clear blue light shoot­ing through the trees, paint­ing the ceil­ing blue in the process. The story of the Nar­ra­tor walk­ing through the woods in the Vienna win­ter night closes the piece, as the three char­ac­ters exit the liv­ing room and form a gen­tle final tableau.