This is a continuation of "Shipwrecked Magic Show: Part One." A reimagined version of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest had an acclaimed world premiere at The Smith Center for the Performing Arts in Las Vegas this past winter. Produced by the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) and The Smith Center, the show is currently in the midst of a second run through June in Cambridge, MA at A.R.T. The highly creative piece was adapted and directed by Aaron Posner and Teller (of Penn and Teller fame), who also provided the magic. The production features music by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, and movement by Pilobolus. The design team includes scenic designer Dan Conway, lighting designer Christopher Akerlind, sound designer Darron L. West, and costume designer Paloma Young.
Akerlind embraced the idea that Prospero was an early 20th century magician and the metaphor that he was a struggling but graceful and elegant magician playing in a tent. A self-proclaimed magic buff since he was a kid, the lighting designer really appreciates the stripped-down quality of Penn and Teller’s magic show, which he called a “Brechtian aesthetic. Their show is so down to earth and crisp. It’s more alive to me in a certain kind of way."
Akerlind’s lighting supported the atmosphere that they had all created for The Tempest. “What Dan did with the set and what Paloma did with the costumes, since Prospero is at the end of his career, is that everything has this wonderful patina to start with,” he explains. “I lit it very naturalistically when we were playing the book scenes between the magic and the songs. I tried to keep the lighting simple and deemphasize style. I wanted a modest use of color. For the magic tricks, I made adjustments. I wanted each magic trick to have a look, so we did stylize those. There is a ubiquitous magic look or style to that portion of the lighting. I argued that each of the magic effects would come out with its own behavior. Sometimes I would light it flat with a followspot or have pools of light from the top. The levitation is beautiful and required no special lighting. We wanted it to be less pretty. The magic came out of the situation, not just random cues out of nowhere.”
Just as Conway had to accommodate the magic tricks’ needs, so did Akerlind’s design. “The first day of tech, we went trick to trick and worked out how to engineer/solve the lighting for each one,” he says. “I thought a lot about lighting the magic tricks in advance. I worked closely with Johnny and Teller on the tricks. Some would look great dead center but not when you got off center. With magic and theatrical lighting, you don’t see as much as you think you do.”
With the weight load issues of the tent, Akerlind had to seriously adjust his lighting design. In fact, he had to cut 60 lights, about a third of his original rig, in order to stay under the weight restrictions. “I had to keep my plot on the simple side after the engineers came in and said that we all had to reduce weight,” he says. “My lighting is very heavy from the sides.”
Warm Incandescent Glow
In addition to the sidelighting, Akerlind took advantage of something that he’d seen in Conway’s scenic renderings. “Footlights were our friends,” he states. “In Dan’s sketches, he had included footlights for the set and for the band, much like those that would have been used in Vaudeville. I used no-color birdies for the footlights. Footlights were also great for Teller’s gimmicks. It’s always best to frontlight magic effects and footlights, and followspots are ubiquitous to theatre. I was happy with every look; it gave the show a theatrical lift.”
Since he had already designed the systems that ultimately got cut due to the weight load in the tent, Akerlind was looking forward to adding them back into the show during the Cambridge run. “Dan created a wonderful armature for the show,” says Akerlind. “There is a velour surround that created this purple universe, the night sky. You couldn’t see a lot of it due to the cuts in fixtures at the Smith. I needed cyc lights up there to really light it well. I got that system back moving into the theatre at A.R.T. Although we only had three days to tech in Cambridge, which is scant, I had already designed and thought through the systems that were cut in Las Vegas. I knew what I wanted to do.”
Akerlind’s design included eight overhead Martin MAC Viper Performances, which he considers a great moving light. “They’re quiet, and what they do with the edge is that it can practically disappear in its softness,” explains Akerlind. “We had a great rig of movers overhead. All eight of them were present in almost every cue. They’re really tireless workhorse fixtures.”
The followspots, which were very heavily used in Akerlind’s cueing, “were these old Lycian short throws that they had at the Smith Center,” he says. “In their antique quality, they were perfect for the image of the rundown circus show. There was some quality to them that felt exhausted like the show did. We also used an old R40 strip that A.R.T. shipped out. I love R40 striplights. Dan made a whole series of backdrops—one of them is behind the band—and it was uplit with scallops of light. For most purposes, the striplight would have been too close to the drop, but the slightly random quality of it looked pretty fantastic.” The moving lights were rented on the East Coast and will travel back with the show when it’s produced at A.R.T. The Smith Center provided the rest of the lighting equipment. Brian Jones was the associate lighting designer.
Akerlind found the production a wonderful challenge. “I love Shakespeare, and this production really came together,” he says. “I’m like a jazz musician with improvised lighting. Shakespeare gave us pure action and pure text. It left a lot of room for real improvisation.”
Stay tuned for the continuation of this article. Read and see more in the latest issue of Live Design which can be downloaded for free for iPad or iPhone at the Apple App Store.