Lighting design for Passing by Dipika Guha, directed by Charlotte Brathwaite, part of the Carlotta Festival of New Plays at the Yale School of Drama. The set is by Julia C. Lee, the clothes are by Mark Nagle, the projections are by Sarah Lasley, and the sound is by Michael Skinner. It happened in the Iseman Theater in May 2011.

All photos by T Charles Erickson. All rights reserved.

Presented simultaneously as museum piece, performance, and live drama, Passing tells the tale of Western colonization. The timeless Mathilda is the object of violence, yet she also conducts the proceedings in the present tense. Guha’s subtle yet biting language blurs the boundaries between times, places, and people, presenting a diorama of history that stays ahead of its audience and is ultimately personal and painful.

The lighting aims to contextualize the audience’s experience by defining then shifting space and time, as well as conveying a range of powerful moods to match the style of the playwright’s work. It also seeks to externalize in bold terms the force of nature that is Mathilda and the native island that she embodies, through my use of strong color fields and simple graphic gestures (a tribute in my own way to the work of the visionary Robert Wilson). My aim was to not shy away from the “sucker punches” that the text truly delivered, by matching them with great visual contrast.

Michael McQuilken has uploaded a 4-minute trailer and 10-minute clip of excerpts of Jib, from Sarah Lasley’s single-take footage. They give a decent idea of the event and the designs.

Photos of Jib can be found here. Feature-length video can be found here.

Lighting design for Michael McQuilken’s Jib, an original play with music. Set and projections by Matt Saunders, clothes by Mark Nagle, sound by Chad Raines. It happened at the Yale School of Drama’s Iseman Theater in January of 2011.

All photos by the phenomenal T. Charles Erickson. All rights reserved.

Tracing the way inspiration flows through time and bodies, life and death, Jib follows four lost souls who become guided by music and its infinite ghosts. Although they will never meet, the lives of these strangers will merge as abandoned melodies drift between them unseen—one man’s rhythm secretly shaking another man’s bones.

Matt’s function-driven set merges the present, the past and the metaphysical into a single sprawling structure designed to tell the intricate story of Jib, with the audience on both sides. A close collaboration with Matt yields a lighting design closely integrated with the set. 20+ hanging and set-mounted practicals serve as signs for the diverse locations. A versatile and visually present lighting system echoes the “unit” approach of the set, and turns the theatrical event into a soundstage film shoot, then a stadium rock concert, then a play again. We take the audience on a roller-coaster ride full of discoveries. My design aims to delight and surprise without hiding a thing.

This, in three parts, is the one-take movie of Michael McQuilken’sJib by videographer Sarah Lasley, who was choreographed into the show as a character.

Photos here.

Lighting design for the play Eurydice by Jean Anouilh in the Peter Meyer translation. Directed by Devin Brain at the Yale School of Drama, in the Iseman Theater in New Haven, October 2010. Sets by Julia C. Lee, clothes by Rebecca Welles, sound by Ben Strange, projections by Paul Lieber.

All photos copyright T. Charles Erickson.

The production discovers the gifted young couple surrounded by a world of grotesque characters giving in to life’s weight, sorry excuses for their former hopeful selves. Refusing to compromise, the lovers meet in death in the form of eternal cinematic beauty. The lighting seeks to enable the set as a vast limbo space in transit between two worlds. It also intends to reference expressionist cinematic styles that represent simultaneous beauty and dark foreboding to create a constantly layered universe.

Lighting design for Uncanny, a music and movement concert conceived by Anna Brenner, Hannah Wasileski and myself in collaboration with the performers: Virginia Logan, John Riddleberger, James Sargent, Jess K. Smith, and the musicians: Andrea Jakobowski and Daniel Sefik. Inspired by Arvo Pärt’s composition Spiegel im Spiegel. Anna directed it, Hannah designed and performed live overhead projections, and Jess arranged and performed songs. It happened at Littlefield in Gowanus, Brooklyn in June 2010.

Lighting design for Presentation, choreographed by Colleen Megley. Part of Connecticut College’s 2010 Senior Concert in New London, CT.

Lighting design for Vagabound, choreographed by Lily Ockwell. Part of Connecticut College’s 2010 Senior Concert in New London, CT.

Lighting design for Flutter, choreographed by Lisa Race. Part of Connecticut College’s 2010 Senior Concert in New London, CT.

Lighting design for Othello, edited from the original Shakespeare by Michael McQuilken and Tanya Dean and directed by Michael McQuilken. Othello was a Yale School of Drama Repertory Shakespeare Project production, at the Iseman Theatre in New Haven. The set was designed by Yoon Choi with an Elizabethan unit by Ming Cho Lee, the clothes were by Ying Song, and the sound was by Katherine Buechner. Yoon Choi also did the photography. It happened in March 2010.