Page 42 - Lighting & Sound America (December 2019) Magazine

THEATRE

Poet says he created “a rig of possibilities” to provide naturalistic lighting for the book scenes and flamboyant concert effects for the
in-performance scenes.

tion control system. Additional scenery was built by Proof they get out of range.” This approach is visible in a scene
Productions and ShowMotion Fabricators.) outside a motel that won’t accept Ike, Tina, and the rest of
The third element contained in Thompson’s scheme is their company. Seen in the distance, it has a soft glow that
the projection design, by Jeff Sugg, which provides scene- makes it seem tantalizingly out of reach. The first act con-
setting details—Tennessee skies, St. Louis streets and sky- cludes with a nightmarish sequence in which a beaten,
lines, a motel exterior glimpsed at night—along with bloody Tina, wearing little more than a slip, flees Ike after a
abstract imagery to back up the onstage numbers. None of knock-down-drag-out battle, staggering along a highway;
the images are too literal, however: Sugg says Thompson behind her is a menacing-looking montage of automotive
requested that everything should be “soft, subtle, and sug- lights, an effect that adds to her sense of disorientation.
gestive. They aren’t about providing more scenery.” “It’s like a dream and it’s terrifying,” Sugg says.
Sugg, explaining the design rules, says his work breaks Sugg who first worked with Thompson on Charlie and
down into three forms of expression: “We’ve got actual the Chocolate Factory, seen at the Lunt-Fontanne in 2017–
locations, the concert moments, and the Etherland world,” 18, says that by the time he came onboard for Tina, “Mark
the latter being Hall’s name for private moments inside had basically developed the general structure. The first
Tina’s head. Because the action “is made up of memo- time I saw it, the design was more elaborate but still a ver-
ries,” the designer says, “we don’t need to see every piece sion of what we have now, with the portals and the walls
of them clearly; we just need a little bit of reference.” coming up through the deck.” The Hamburg and London
Indeed, he adds, “Hyperreal imagery is a problem for productions utilized the same basic concept, but, because
me; I always want to find a better solution. We treated the the Lunt-Fontanne has a notably long, narrow auditorium
[upstage] video screen as if there was a focal plane, hav- dominated by a large mezzanine that creates a consider-
ing many of the scenic backgrounds become blurrier as able overhang, Sugg added a second video screen above

42 • December 2019 • Lighting&Sound America