steps to lighting !

The stages of lighting set-up

1. Rigging

"The current stage is rigging the lights in the theatre and I’m watching rehearsals. Then we’ll have a rehearsal-room run-through, which I’ll watch. That’s sort of the end of the process in the rehearsal room and rehearsals then move on stage.
"In the meantime, we have focusing. All the sets have been built, all the lights have been rigged and made to work. Focusing is when we go to each light individually, turn it on, and point it to the part of the stage I want it to be.
"Lights can be zoomed so they’re bigger or smaller, with sharp or soft edges, which can be shaped with shutters or barn doors, mechanisms which can square the edges of the beam. The colour I want them to be is put in front of them."

2. Plotting

"Next is plotting, where I sit in the auditorium, normally with the director, and the set’s arranged as it would be for the first scene.
"Then I’ll choose which lights are to be turned on at what intensity, so I’ll be rattling off numbers to someone else who’s controlling the lights on a kind of computer.
"We make a basic look for each scene – without any of the cast there, normally with just people standing in for them – balancing very roughly what each picture is going to look like."

3. Lit rehearsals

"Then we have lit rehearsals. In opera it’s slightly different from theatre: we just light over the top of what the rehearsals are doing on stage and then I adjust the lights accordingly.
"We then bring in the orchestra and you have orchestra rehearsals. Again, I’m working on the lighting over the top of the orchestra rehearsals.
"Eventually you get to dress rehearsal and then opening night. Hopefully by opening night everything’s fixed, it’s all programmed into the computer, ready to perform in front of an audience.
"And then after opening night I go onto the next one…"