In the Booth
There’s more to lights and sound than just moving a spotlight onto an actor or pressing a button to play a song. Months of preparation go into programing the colors on the stage, figuring out microphone plots, and shaping the preset music and vamps around how the actors interpret their scenes. Even on show night the sound and lighting crews make adjustments. If there’s an issue with microphones, a singer misses a music cue, or the lights aren’t hitting an actor correctly, they quickly work so that the audience doesn’t notice, the actors and crew are comfortable, and the show can carry on.
“There’s always something that needs to change. You will never design something and it will be the final product, even during the show,” freshman Rhett Cunningham said. “There’s always something that can be improved.”
Cunningham designed the lighting for Cinderella. Since the show is a fairytale, Cunningham utilized color to create a fantastical feel. In the song “In My Own Little Corner”, Cinderella describes the different adventures she wishes to take. Every time the course of her imagination changes (about 20 times during the number), the lights change with it. When she imagined “meeting a lioness in her lair” the entire stage turned red before turning blue and purple when Cinderella sadly realized she was back “in her own little corner”.
“You want the audience to feel what [Cinderella is] feeling,” Cunningham said. “You have to sit down and listen to the entire soundtrack to understand the moods- what we want the audience to feel, and how we can represent that with color. [Sometimes people] don’t realize that there’s this huge color palette on the stage that’s setting the mood for the audience.”
Lighting played a major role in the show. During the overture, the audience cheered as lights danced across the curtain before they were even introduced to the plot. Light shined on a large piece of fabric to make senior Nash Gilbo look like a giant that the knights were battling. A romantic scene between Cinderella and Prince Topher was framed by a spotlight while the rest of the stage was covered in blue, appearing as if the spotlight was the moon.
Overall, the booth’s work in both lighting and sound added to the show’s magic.
“I think the most magical part is how flowy the show is. It’s not a show that just goes from scene to scene,” Cunningham said. “You go from two different locations but you don’t just snap and then you’re there. You’re somehow magically transported there in a dreamy kind of way. That’s what’s cool about Cinderella.