The Front Page

Early on in my first lighting class (plainly called Lighting Design 1), we were assigned the task of taking a simple set rendering of The Front Page, xeroxed for our convenience, and make two light renderings for it. One using only white, the other in color. Simple enough. What light renderings are in my case are simply drawings to aid the director and other production staff of a performance in understanding what the lighting designer envisions for the stage. This is, of course, something I had never done given that, before college, the last art class I had taken was 8th grade (I believe I got a B or B-). The way I've learned to do light renderings is to simply take the set rendering, scan it, and print it out on some sort of black paper and then draw on that with colored pencils. It would be better if I used gouache, but I am even less skilled with paint than I am with a pencil. Regardless, light renderings are something I actually really enjoy doing. They just make more sense to me than drawing in the normal sense. When you draw normally, you're starting with a world full of bright, white light and adding shadow to that. This is, of course, the exact opposite of reality where light illuminates the darkness of the world. As a lighting designer whose purpose comes down to doing just that, I think it's understandable that I'd think that way.

As for the assignment, I was really happy with the results, given that it was my first ever attempt at doing such a thing. Although the rendering was from a design for The Front Page, the play didn't matter: it was just a set to use. As such, the actual "design" of our renderings was irrelevant. Really, the guest lecturer, David Finley, was looking for how well we could interpret the behavior of light. For my own purposes, the black and white rendering was a night time look, with a single desk of this office lit up by its own lamp. Most of the light comes from the bright moon outside, streaming in through the windows. I was very timid with this drawing, not wanting to make an overly obvious mistake. In his critique of my two works, Dave told me it was the more successful of the two, which I tend to agree with.

The Front Page - Black and White

The next rendering, the color one, is set in the early morning of the same night. Unlike some people in my class, I decided not to really "design" my renderings, rather, I chose the sources of light (morning sun, overhead lamps) and tried to show how it would actually look. The color is all a bit off, but I was still reasonably happy with it. Looking back at it now after growing an incredible amount (if I say so myself) as an artist, it's funny to look at the little mistakes made or even how I may have made it more difficult for myself by making it realistic.

The Front Page - Color

Things like this are why I love where I am right now. Even though I was up for God knows how long working on these two small drawings that weren't even supposed to be all that time-consuming, I was still happy to be doing it and to be learning. Any time that I've suffered or stressed here at Purchase, I can look back at these and remind myself that I'm doing something that I love.

It's nice, it really is.

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

Central to Streetcar is the idea that it is a part of human nature that desperation leads us to cling to whatever scraps remain of our lives and to our very grip on reality itself even if, in doing so, we lose sight of that reality. At its opening, the harshness of this is already beginning to show despite the dimness of the evening. The few street lamps are sharp and penetrating, their edges bearing down on everyone beneath. It’s not unrealistic, rather it’s very much natural. It feels like a mirror, reflecting to the world the truth. For Blanche, this reflection is too much to bear, only recently having been forced to come to terms with what her life has become. The mirror is dehumanizing, it doesn’t obey the wishes of the one looking at it, but shows them for who they are; each defect illuminated for all to see.

"Blanche Arrives"

As Blanche attempts to slip back into her habit of deceitful self-preservation, a change is beginning to occur; the world softens to her, even if only very slightly and temporarily. The mirror is now fogging up from the steam of her bath. She is like a child in her nursery, her mobile is the paper lantern she hides beneath, its gentle glow protecting her from the world she has receded from. Though washed with this warmth, there still remain shadows hinting at her lies. Her constant reminder of the past, the Varsouviana, inevitably shows the truth. The mirror, warping, now more like one found in a funhouse, distorts the world in her moments of hallucination. Purple and green replace the normal ambers of the Quarter, casting Blanche into confusion. The warmth disappears and the shadows grow where they defy all reason, freakishly streaking her face with no regard to her protector lamp.

"The Varsouviana"

At the resolution, Blanche is broken; the mirror shattered as her actual circumstances and her imagined life collide. With no real sense of what is real and what is merely a ruse or delusion, the shadows come out again more exaggerated than ever. They turn the men into giants and dwarf Blanche. There is an awkward hue, not quite right, to everything seen, the normal colors of day having been replaced by those altogether more vibrant, though garish, colors of Blanche’s mania.

The Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

Although Willy Loman has spent most of his life working and striving to become a successful, well liked man, in the end, his legacy is a $20,000 life insurance policy and the lies he tells himself and everyone around him. It is not that these are the lies of a bad person intent on deceiving, it is what he needs to do in order to try to live up to the expectations he sets for himself. Unfortunately for Willy, he’s not particularly talented at either selling or simply making people like him, but he still thinks he needs to act like he is for the sake of his sons’ as much as his own. The lies he tells create a self-perpetuating cycle of deception that ends with the lies becoming so ingrained in his mind and those of his family that not only are they practically instinct, they become confused with reality as Willy slips farther and farther into his dementia.

"Reality"

Growing and crawling over everything in its path, the lies Willy tells are like a creeping vine expanding uninhibited in a foreign wilderness. Everything that is too slow to escape it eventually is overcome as all light is blocked out by the sheer density of Willy’s illusory dream life. In the course of his life, Willy’s deceit grows from exaggerating his own success and skills to always trying to hide Biff’s and Happy’s failures. Linda and the boys loved him so fully for his character and devotion to him in their early days that everything he told them––how he is a “well liked man,” his great aptitude for salesmanship, and even the compliments he gave them––took hold like that vine, ultimately deciding their fates. Willy pays the price for creating these untruths and manipulating reality through giving his life in a final delusional act of sacrifice; he kills himself at least partially thinking that the money from his life insurance policy could leave a greater legacy than he ever could.

"Fantasy"

The two worlds of Willy Loman, those of reality and the fantasy world of the past, are at first highly separate entities. The former is characterized by the oppressive vines of Willy’s lies streaking the stage and beginning to take over. The world at these times of the present are cooler with Willy’s age and increasing inability to function; its blues filling the deep corners of the stage. Contrasting these scenes are those of the past Willy inexorably falls into. It is not consumed by heat, rather it is simply distinctly warmer than the Lomans’ real world, back before he started losing hold of his life. This world is hazed over and does not have the distinct lines of the other. Gradually, as the stories Willy tells completely take over his life, the two worlds come closer together until they are almost indiscernible. This is marked by a general darkening of the stage. Finally, with his death, darkness finally consumes the stage as the good intentioned but misguided salesman succumbs to his weaknesses and the lies he has told all his life.