British lighting designer Jon Clark is nominated for a Tony Award for Best Lighting Design In A Play for his work on The Inheritance at Broadway’s Ethel Barrymore Theatre. He has already won an Olivier Award and a Knight of Illumination Award for his design on the British productions at the Young Vic and Noel Coward theatres.
He spoke to Live Design about the scope of the work and evoking New York City in the 1980s.
Live Design: So this is a lengthy play, comprising of two, three-hour parts spread over two nights. What did you think when you first became involved with it?
Jon Clark: When I first read it it was probably an hour or two longer than that!
It went through quite a journey to hone it into the play it became but it was such a compelling story it didn’t feel daunting at any time. It was a hell of a lot of work but I’ve worked a lot at the Young Vic and it is such an amazing environment to create new work in, and very supportive, and they gave it the proper time to develop it. We were in safe hands under the leadership of (director) Stephen Daldry. It wasn’t overwhelming, there is always a fear when you start work, whatever the scope of it, that you won’t penetrate the empty space and engage but that fear is also the thing that brings you back each time, that’s what is exciting about the work in the first place. It’s a beautiful thing.
LD: Were you able to change your vision from one part to the next or were you concerned to keep them thematically similar?
JC: They are definitely two parts of a single play, as part two follows on chronologically from part one, so it’s a single lighting design concept for one play. There wasn’t a conscious decision to make part two have a different identity from part one. But, crucially, it evolves over the arc of the whole play and the change really does become apparent in the second part. The lighting follows the structure of the play.
It opens with a group of men sitting on a bare stage and they tell each other their stories. Gradually, the storytellers become the characters and another world emerges, like in any good novel. It becomes quite complex and layered and the lighting design evolves in a similar way. Part one is largely lit monochromatically in a very open stage, and then, as the characters emerge, I start to take the light away so it becomes more focused. Part one has no color at all but there are shifts of temperature that follow the rhythm of the play, framing and isolating characters from each other or bringing them together. I had a number of rules about how I explored the place and the relationships on stage, for example keeping part one monochrome, so there was a clarity to the design. When we move to part two, the language develops as the lighting becomes more heightened, using solid blocks of color that are used violently at times creating an intensity, and then return to the cooler world of part one. There is a tension between the simple tungsten world of part one and the more abstract and intense color that mirrors the fracturing the relationships between the characters in part two. But the lighting maintains a very clear visual arc across all six hours focused around the characters onstage as there are limited scenic elements.
All of the first half takes place in a black box space with this white raised platform where the action takes place. It also has a secret scissor lift and an hour and a half in there is a brilliantly-directed moment. The stage gradually starts to sink as the characters are all just deflated because Hilary Clinton has just lost the election. The stage lowers about a meter so slowly you are not even sure it is happening until about 30 seconds in.
The production has one other scenic element. There is a black wall the audience is staring at for the whole of part one until the very end when a door opens to reveal a smaller, scenic space upstage. Throughout part two that is used for moments such as a cherry tree, which appears upstage and then is hidden again behind the doors.
LD: Was it hard maintaining the intensity on the characters when the scenic elements were conserved for just a few moments?
JC: If the design doesn't come from the play then it becomes disconnected from it, and I think because the elements all supported each other dramatically that helped to make it such a strong piece of work. There are bold looks, but it was never about the lighting creating a spectacle.
LD: Can you talk about some standout moments?
JC: Across all three iterations of the play, at the end of part one the audience is whimpering. Every performance. The moment concerns the central character who, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, welcomes dying men to his house in upstate New York. At this moment, about 20 extras walk one by one through the audience to the stage representing the men who have died, and it is almost overwhelming. Over the white platform on the black stage, I had a lighting truss filled with mostly pods of PAR cans. As the stage fills with men over several minutes, I added one single beam of light for each man so that gradually the entire stage is filled with light until it snaps to black.
Much later on, in part two, there is a simple idea that works incredibly well. A character is destitute and walking the streets of New York while contemplating suicide. I already had the suspended truss above the stage, but there was a lot of room above that, so I hung three 5K Fresnels on a fly bar above it. As the character walked the streets, I flew the bar in very slowly until it almost touched the truss below, and the 5Ks cast a massive shadow on the stage and as they descend the shadows move. It was such a simple but effective way to animate the light. The shadow picks up the truss structure and evokes the lots where they stack cars on top of each other, industrial and bleak.
In the secret space upstage behind sliding doors there is a low-resolution, three-sided video wall. At one point there is a scene set on Fire Island. When the doors are opened it exposes the first real use of intense color. Bob Crowley wanted a completely different visual every time the doors opened, but we discovered there was no space to hide three different sets in any of the theatres and so the video wall was designed to show different worlds, green in spring, orange in autumn, and Fire Island. We turned it into a light box using EvenLED by Martin.
The Inheritance, Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York
Gear List
Conventional Lights
35 x ETC Source 4 LED Series 2 Lustr
22 x ETC Source 4 750w
17 x PAR 64 VNSP 1000w
41 x PAR 64 NSP 1000w
38 x PAR 64 MFL 1000w
03 x Bambino Fresnel 5000w with Barn Doors
08 x Strand Quartet Fresnel 650w with Barn Doors
Moving Lights and Scrollers.
13 x Martin MAC Encore Performance WRM
01 x Martin MAC Viper Wash DX
12 x Martin MAC TW1 80v, Narrow Lens, with Louvre and Top Hat
10 x GLP Impression X4 Bar 20
53 x Wybron ColoRam IT Scroller for PAR 64
Smoke & Haze
02 x MDG Atmosphere Hazer
02 x Look Solutions Viper Smoke Machine
02 x JEM Glaciator X-Stream
02 x Look Solutions Power Tiny
02 x Martin AF1 Fan Variable Speed
Control
01 x 8K ETC Eos Ti Generation 2
01 x 8K ETC RPU3 Generation 2
01 x 8K ETC ION Xe
02 x ETC Nomad Puck
02 x City Theatrical NEO Transceiver
04 x City Theatrical D4 Dimmer
Dimming
02 x ETC Sensor 96x2.4kW Touring Rack
01 x ETC Sensor 48x2.4kW Touring Rack
Lighting Credits
Lighting Design: Jon Clark
US Associate Lighting Designer: Gina Scherr
UK Associate Lighting Designer: Ben Pickersgill
Production Electricians: Jimmy Maloney and Brad Robertson
House Electrician: Brian Aman
Moving Light Programmer: Grant Wilcoxen
Production Manager: Frank Swann for Hudson Theatrical
Lighting Package by PRG.