A photo of the Shadow Puppet lighting (Backlight) (Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, 2016).

I have taken on the role of lighting and sound designer before at the university, when I took the Shakespeare module. I was therefore thrilled to be able to have the chance to take on the role again for our theatre company.  When we got the general idea of the play, and had some context of the scenes, I then began to decide on what colours I wanted to use. For the opening of the show, we had our puppet show; therefore I only needed the back light to aid us in making the shadow puppets work. The genre of the first scene was Film Noir. I then researched images of the film noir nature, and also looked at videos to help me get an idea of how the era was represented. However, Film Noir is mainly film, so I had to get creative and think of a way that I could portray this to an audience and to make it work on stage. During my research I came across two significant images that I have wrote about in my previous post, these images helped me to get into the mindset of how Film Noir was portrayed. For our show, I used dim, blue wash lighting and used the haze machine to create the mist; I wanted to create an atmosphere for the actors and the audience. For scene two, the genre was Western. For the western, I used orange and yellow to create a warm feel; I wanted the light change to change when Cinderella said ‘I feel the heat warming me up’ in her recorded monologue, so that it could create the illusion of her thoughts being revealed to the audience so when she thought of the heat warming her up, I wanted to show the audience this too; and perhaps the audience felt a part of the western atmosphere, this is what I would have liked to have created- so that the audience felt part of the show.  The third scene was that of the genre of horror. I therefore used white and red together so that the red wasn’t too overpowering, but it still created the scary eerie atmosphere, I also used a black light when hiding Cinderella’s character from the audience. The strobe light was also a choice that I felt would be good for making the characters on stage look as though they are running in slow motion; this could increase comedic value and also gave Cinderella’s character time to walk behind the Ugly Stepsisters to make it creepy when she then went and touched one of the sisters shoulders. The fourth scene was the silent movie scene. I used a warm wash of lights, mainly light colours to try and create a sepia effect. The fifth scene was a Telenovela style; I used a pink and white light, as this scene then ran into the Fairy godmother and Cinderella scene where they first meet, but it is actually in fact the last scene of the play. I kept the same lighting state because I wanted to show the continuity of the scene. For all of the lights in the show, LED’s I felt were the best choice because of how I could mix the colours and the variety of colours that they held.