Noele Stollmack designs lighting and sets for theaters and opera companies, traditional productions, and cutting-edge work. She also did architectural projects and product development and served as lighting director and lighting supervisor. Read Part One of her story here.
Stollmack toured with Meredith Monk and Ann Hamilton, a sculptor and an installation artist. “Both Meredith and Ann were in the piece as well. They both approached the theater space in a somewhat hostile way. They didn’t like performing in proscenium houses, but if you’re going to go on tour, you’re going to end up playing in proscenium houses,” Stollmack notes. “They gave me the opportunity to look at a space in a different way than I’d been trained to do.”
How can you make performance behind a proscenium immersive and interactive? How can you deal with sound that had to be in a specific relation to the house system? “That taught me as a set designer to have a relationship with the room you’re performing in. When you tell a story visually, you can’t be at cross purposes with the room. You have to make choices that are scenically in harmony.”
The team toured Atlas, an Opera in Three Parts, one of Monk’s biggest pieces, across the United States and throughout Europe. Stollmack, who was 25 at the time and assistant to Beverly Emmons, recalls that none of the local crews spoke English. They communicated by calling out numbers.
When Stollmack realized she had to miss a date on the touring project, she asked electrician/lighting director Robyn Shultz to step in and light the show. “It was a challenging project, with multiple disciplines in play…in recording and installation art. The expectations were surreal. I learned the show because Noele was wise enough to hire me in supporting roles first, as TD and head carpenter, depending on the week,” Shultz recalls. “That trust allowed me to develop a very deep understanding of the intricacies of that show which I would never have gotten without [that experience]. It allowed me to see a little more of what she saw, which proved to be invaluable as we proceeded with those dates.”
“One time, I did a focus on one of the dates we overlapped on,” says Schultz. “Noele was meticulous and precise to an extent that I had not really dealt with previously. I learned how critical a couple inches of shutter cut were in establishing the design. I also learned that getting the vision realized and the plan executed was more important than having a good time with the local crew. Noele might not have made many friends in that context, but she certainly earned the respect of many. I find that model to be exemplary and have followed suit over the years pulling off the execution of designs that were often greeted initially with groans and eye-rolls.”
For Stollmack, her time with Monk was essential to her continuing education. “Meredith’s work has been a pretty significant influence, just the opportunity to see how she makes her choices, and the different collaborators she has brought in, in the decades of work I’ve done with her.”
Stollmack adds, “There are times in Meredith’s work where the performer is a geometric component in the composition on stage and times when she’s telling the story. One of the reasons her works are some of my favorites is the bounce back and forth between gestures and treating the actor as a component of what we’re seeing on stage and what is my motivation for a light cue.”
“I was able to implement what has become a tenant of my work, that the lighting should be a character in the play that does not distract and does not draw attention unless it was intended to draw attention. I want to make beautiful light, but I don’t want people to walk out talking about the lighting design. That’s part of why I love big sources from far away. You’re making a beautiful statement with it, but it doesn’t pull you out.”