A judging panel of entertainment professionals shortlisted Cat Tate Starmer's design for 1984 for the Play Award in the Theatre category in Live Design's 2020 Design Achievement Awards. Vote for the most outstanding projects now!
In the play, anti-hero Winston Smith is incarcerated in a brutalist cell with unyielding light pouring in from above and below while he is forced to divulge his Thoughtcrimes. Cat Tate Starmer's lighting design hinged on the idea of white torture—a psychological torture which includes making a room lit day and night to deprive the sense of time or day and prevent sleep—and installed practical bulbs overhead and underfoot practical bulbs. Beyond the practical set-mounted lights, theatrical fixtures were employed to sculpt the space and actors, create focus, and explore subtle emotional shifts in the narrative. Starmer provided the audience some relief from the intensity onslaught with shifts in color temperature, a limited gel color range, multiple light source types—from arc to LED to fluorescent to incandescent—strong directionality, and texture.
“Starmer’s design offered a psychological terror that never let up: stark, oppressive, harsh and super minimalist.” — Nancy Wozny, Editor in Chief at Arts and Culture Texas and a Design Achievement Awards judge on the Theatre panel
Watch a video clip of Alley Theatre's production of 1984 here.
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