Journey To The Past: Lighting Anastasia On Broadway

Directed by Tony Award winner Darko Tresnjak, Anastasia premiered at Hartford Stage in 2016 and is currently running on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre. The production received 13 Outer Critics Circle Awards nominations—the most for any musical this year—as well as nine Drama Desk Award nominations and two Tony Award nominations. Recognized for magical designs, the creative team includes Alexander Dodge, sets; Aaron Rhyne, projections; Donald Holder, lights; Peter Hylenski, sound; and Linda Cho, costumes. Read about the set design and projection design.

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Nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for his lighting, Holder felt it was important to unify the foreground with the background and create a direct and clear relationship between the actors and scenery with the video. “A lot of the detail in terms of where we are and time of day are beautifully rendered in the visuals, so I felt that one of my principle jobs was to extend those details from the two-dimensional video screens to a three-dimensional environment,” the designer explains.

During the prologue in the grand hall of the Romanov palace, Holder relies on color to shift from 1907 to 1917, and finally to 1927. “When Anastasia becomes a teenager right before the Russian Revolution, the space turns from a subdued and cool blue to a very rich gold, a burnished space in a very opulent, lush environment,” he says.

In the subsequent scenes in St. Petersburg, Holder uses tints of white and steel blue. “It is a fairly unsaturated and cool palette to evoke the harshness of the conditions and the very cold winters,” he explains. To embellish scenic elements and cross-light actors, templates portray light pushing through fallen debris from gashes in exterior walls to heighten the post-revolutionary environment.

Act Two, set in a springtime Paris, has tones of pale gold and lavender, and is richly layered with broken light. “I hoped it would feel like sunlight filtering through trees and would imbue the stage pictures with an impressionistic quality,” says Holder.

Various color choices were influenced by other designers. “It’s important for me to understand what the color palettes are in the visuals or what the texture is like in the costumes,” Holder adds. “It’s a lot about me keeping my eyes open and having an ongoing conversation with the other designers.”

The real workhorse of the lighting rig is the PRG Best Boy HP Spot, which Holder affirms “was the most important tool in my arsenal.” ETC Source Four Ellipsoidals in varying degrees as well as Source Four LED Series 2 Lustr units, Source Four Revolutions, and Source Four PARs also dominate the rig. Other fixtures include Philips Vari-Lite VL3500Q Spots, VL2500 Spots, and VL2500 Washes; Martin by Harman MAC Aura XB Washes and Atomic 3000 Strobes; Philips Color Kinetics ColorBlast 12 TRs and 12 TRX units; High End Systems Dataflash AF1000 Strobes; and Wybron Coloram II scrollers. An ETC Eos Ti console controls conventional and automated lighting, all programmed by Scott Kearns Tusing. PRG supplied the lighting equipment.

Stay tuned for more on the sound and costume design.

For more, read the June 2017 issue of Live Design.