Live Design launches its four annual 31 Days Of Plots, one per day during the month of December 2021, highlighting a different lighting design, from across theatre, concert tours, corporate events, and more as we wind down 2021 and head toward the new year.
For over thirty years, Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman have performed their cabaret act "Kiki and Herb" at venues ranging from small New York clubs to the iconic stage of Carnegie Hall. After a fifteen year hiatus, Kiki and Herb are back in a new show titled SLEIGH at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's historic Harvey Theater. This show marks their debut at BAM and their first collaboration with lighting designer Brandon Stirling Baker.
"For those who are not aware of this cabaret duo, Kiki and Herb have been considered by many to be a New York City cultural landmark that often performs unique arrangements of popular songs ranging from pop hits to punk rock underground music. Although this show is very much a dark-comedy concert, there is a beautiful and sophisticated narrative that exists in each and every performance," says Baker. "As a lighting designer working with Vivian and Kenny for the first time, I spent a lot of time researching the past performances of this iconic duo. I attended secret warm-up shows that they performed on the lower east side of Manhattan and developed a clear understanding of the style and performance flow."
Baker continues: "When I designed the light plot for their new show at BAM I drew inspiration from the off-beat music and quirky staging that this music duo had developed over the years. I decided very early on that I wanted all of the theatrical light to be asymmetrical so that we could follow the off-beat nature of this show. There is nothing normal about the characters Kiki and Herb, so I felt that the lighting had to follow that logic. Conceptually for me as a designer when a light plot is exposed to the audience it is important to me that there is a scenic cleanliness to each lighting idea. All of the lights hanging over stage were focused like an opera backlight system, extreme angles and mostly coming from a single direction at a time. In many ways this was a simple light plot that was used in bold ways to match the spirit of Kiki and Herb."
To see more 31 Days Of Plots, click here.
