Q&A: Scenic & Lighting Designer Patrick Anthony Of Filigree Theatre

Patrick Anthony: I studied at The Lir National Academy of Dramatic Art, which is a part of Trinity College, Dublin. I ended up not continuing through the whole program, but during my time there, I learned a lot, not only about myself as an artist, but also about what was important to me aesthetically and the way that I’m most effective with my collaborators.

LD: What parts of your education you have found most useful in your career as a designer? What tech did you learn and use, (or wish you had learned!) or which nontechnical aspects of the course?

PA: In my undergraduate education, it was just dimmers and incandescents We actually did get a few VL 1000s my senior year. But everything in lighting has moved so quickly since 2009.  I think there’s a baseline that good lighting education should start with. I like keeping a simple console like an ETC Express around for the basics of both design and implementation. Then, you can move forward as a student and eventually a professional.

On the non technical side, the most important lesson I always learned was from my undergraduate TD, Robert Self. It’s ok to say “I don’t know”. Always be prepared. Always have a plan. Always have a backup plan, but people who can’t say those words when they really don’t know, are both unreliable and unsafe.  

LD: What attracted you to the profession, and what made you choose theatre versus, for example, live music?

PA: I’ve given this a lot of thought and it makes perfect sense. When I was a kid I did two things: I climbed trees and I played with Legos; and not just little trees and not just make-the-kit kinda Legos. Everything got recombined for new circumstances and new plot.

I started a small liberal-arts undergraduate program as an actor. I wasn’t a very good actor. When I got picked off for tech, I took to it. I got excited that I could change the world around me. I built an extension to my dorm bed to make it bigger. As soon as I got into lighting, I felt so artistically engaged. I could shape the world around the actor.

To get back to your original question, I’ve done a little live music, a fair share of live events and I even do a Mardi Gras Ball every year, but I enjoy the craft of live theatre best. In theatre, I’m able to take the time to shape the world around the actors, dancers, aerialists, lighting-wise to reflect, in a nuanced way, the story that is playing out on stage.  

LD: When you undertake a project, what comes to your first, the scenic design or lighting?

PA: That’s difficult, because I started in lighting. I don’t think I separate the two when I read a script, but you have to have a scenic design first and you get a run through with a lighting design. That’s actually been really tough for me. When I see an actor in a rehearsal room I can picture the set and the light around them. When it’s just a script, it’s imagining off a page. I’m sure that’s incredibly freeing for some, but it’s difficult for me.

When I come to a project, my first instinct as a scenic designer is to create a world that leaves space for the director and actors to play in.  My aesthetic tends toward a minimalist or static environment that gives that openness for the actors to move.  I’m a lighting designer at heart. When I teach lighting design, I always tell my students the following analogy: if the stage is a pond, then the actor is the stone and we (as lighting designers) create the ripple around the stone.  

When I’m hired as a scenic designer, I work closely with the director at a much earlier stage in the process, sharing images, figuring out what a world looks and feels like, and what the director’s needs are in terms of the space. This is particularly true in a non-traditional space. When I am hired as both scenic and lighting designer (as I am often with Filigree) then I instinctively tend to integrate lighting design into the architecture of the scenic elements, whether they are practicals in a realistic, naturalistic set, or in ways that are more subtle or unusual in a set that is more abstract.  This is a best case kind of scenario.  Unfortunately, there are more times than I would like to admit that “Lighting Designer Patrick” gets really annoyed at “Scenic Designer Patrick” for creating a design that makes for challenging and complicated lighting situations.  

LD: Does Filigree have it's own gear? What are your go-to fixtures? The workhorses you always use? Why do you like them?

PA: Filigree mounts work in all different non-traditional spaces, the lighting requirements vary greatly from show to show: outdoors, indoors, naturalistic, abstract. I try to focus in on what is needed for a particular show so that those fixtures (and accessories) can be rented.

Filigree doesn’t have a lighting inventory of it’s own, so I have to bring everything in. Besides a few outdated fixtures and my own, plus my Ion Classic (love that board), I rely on other theatre companies that I work with and local lighting companies. Austin Event Lighting and Olden Lighting have been more than kind in supporting my endeavors. I’m very lucky to have such good connections (and by connections, I mean friends) around town. I’ve worked with most of them for over a decade, in various capacities, and am grateful for their friendship.

The workhorses are always going to be the most affordable options. It’s easy to get a static LED PAR, but I try to push for something that’s going to be a specific factor in the lighting design. 

For Antigone, that was a slow rotating gobo around a center fire pit. For Sunny Days, a recent production of The Vortex Repertory Company is was the VL 2600 (and it’s shutters). For Suddenly Last Summer, I knew I needed Lustrs to do a smoothe slow color change over the course of the entire play. The play goes late afternoon into night. It’s ninety minutes of warm amber into lavender into cool blue. I needed a fixture that could do a cue that slow without some sort of click between DMX values.

LD: Is there a new  or vintage fixture that loved for a particular cue or production?

PA: I’m obsessed with the Mega-Lite Circa Scoop. With all respect to the designers, it’s a weird light. One CW-WW core. One inner ring of RGB and one outer ring of RGB. I think it’s total attribute count is 55 addresses. It’s silly and it’s wonderful. I’ve only found two occasions to use it, but they were excellent occasions.

As to the vintage, I just need newer LED technology to do what the beam projector did; the “Finger of God”. No incandescent or LED fixture that I’ve met does exactly the same thing. There’s still a few around, the last one I used was for a production of Sweeney Todd and it didn’t disappoint.

LD: What are some of the challenges you face designing for the Filigree Theatre?

PA: Austin is an intensely creative city, however, there are only a small number or traditional theatre venues and stages in town. Because of this, many companies, such as Filigree, have adapted ways of making theatre in non-traditional spaces. With Filigree productions, I have lit backyards, historic mansions, museums and, for Filigree’s home for last season and this current season, a Quonset hut that dates back to 1948. I believe that working within constraints can often make better art and lead to innovative choices.  However, it is always a fine line between having too many constraints, whether they are budgetary or physical or architectural challenges of a non-traditional venue, that undermine the intention or vision for a project, or too few constraints that the discipline needed to realize a vision gets lost in the abundance of possibilities.

I’m proud of my knowledge of getting things done in weird places and situations. I have creative ways I mount lights to trees, specific ways I work with unconventional building structures. Ratchet straps are sometimes involved. What I try to do I make every place I work better. If I can afford it in a show budget, I hang a permanent lighting position that I can use for the next show. We’re on tight budgets and I’d rather buy something to make things better than keep renting the same things over and over again.

LD: Congratulations on your two Austin B. Iden Payne Award nominations for shows last season. What are some of the things you are most proud of for those productions and why do you think they attracted the nomination?

PA: The two Austin BIPAC Award nominations are for Outstanding Scenic Design and for Outstanding Lighting Design for The Filigree Theatre’s production of Antigone, adapted by David Rush and Directed by Elizabeth V. Newman.

For a set design I have never drafted a rendering so quickly after meeting with a director.  Inspiration for the set of Antigone came to me very quickly and completely. The finished design was almost exactly what my initial render looked like. The set consisted of large arches intersecting what I took as the crowns of competing princes. One was broken at it’s base signifying defeat. In my mind, it was a monument erected in the spirit of unity, dilapidated and broken. I know all this metaphor doesn’t exactly get across to every audience member but sometimes it’s for you and whoever else interprets it their own way.

I took inspiration from the Siege of Sarajevo in the 90s and the current Ukrainian conflict. That started the architectural style and the sandbags around monuments. I made the arches two pieces of lauan with 2x4 bracing in the middle for structural support and LED tape; something to add energy and dynamism to the chorus scenes. I asked the scenic charge for paint that was “rusted gold”, which I realize is not a thing. Add a “Jagged Moonlight” gobo and heavy haze and everything clicked together.

LD: What is one of your favorite recent designs and what makes that production special for you?

PA: I had a great time lighting Raven-Winged Hours for The Archive Theatre. It’s a collection of Edgar Allen Poe stories and gives you just enough realism and just enough of the fantastical to have so much fun. Each story starts off in a more real-world situation and ends up with some form of madness or murder or both. It’s so simple, but when The Red Death entered at the back of the house, I had an LED PAR mounted on a fogger on a dolly behind them. When I heard the preview audience gasped, I knew it worked. I love those moments.

LD: What are some of your favorite methods for researching your scenic environments? 

PA: Going to a place in person, if it is feasible, is incredibly valuable – to get a true sense or the feel of the place – the vibe of a place. In terms of methods of researching, it depends if it is a place or a feel.  I do what many people do - create a library of images – whether about the subject of the show, the place – or just somehow evocative of the feel of a show and share it with the director. Out of the shared library of images, the director and I explore and find the key images that become a sort of a touchstone that then becomes the basis of the design. I think it’s important to base things in reality and then set off on the journey of the play.

LD: How do you stay up to date on live entertainment technology?

PA: I’m very at home in the EOS Family operating system.  If I come across something that I’m less familiar with, then I reach out to friends and colleagues who have that particular knowledge. YouTube and Google are, of course, always helpful as well. I’ve also been through a few training sessions with ETC. Small theatre in Austin doesn’t usually get the latest lighting fixtures, but they filter through and sometimes I get to rent one really cool new thing.

LD: Any sustainability practices you follow? 

PA: It’s not interesting but I believe we should reuse materials as much as possible and share resources with other local companies. It helps everyone’s budget and there’s no reason we should be re-making more standard theatrical building blocks (i.e. a 4x8 flat). This requires storage and logistics, but it’s the best way to reduce the amount of waste in any theatre community.