Who Killed Eva Smith??? It wasn't the Lighting Designer!!

A few words about BLT’s 2013 production of ‘An Inspector Calls’ from a lighting point of view.  This is not a new play for me, having studied it myself whilst at school (a while ago now!) and having also lit the 2006 production.

The actual design process for me will start towards the back end of the rehearsal process; by this point the majority of the blocking is done  (The process where the Director will move the actors around the set).

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To begin I will attend rehearsals and just sit there watching the actors and the positions they assume and how they move around the stage. I will look at the key acting areas  - for example in this production you will notice that a lot of the lines are spoken ‘front on’ straight out to the fourth wall, which impacts on how I light those parts of the stage. As I attend more and more rehearsals I start to build a picture of how the final lighting design will look. 

I am very used to working with Neil in his capacity as Director; we understand each other and often don’t have to talk to each other about certain things. He is normally sat at my side operating sound for his productions (he hates watching his own plays and prefers to have something to do!!)  Neil will have his own ideas on the look and feel of the play and then I’ll add my bits in and we arrive at the overall design for the show, although the bulk of decisions will be made in good time the best ideas often come at the eleventh hour!

It’s not very often that I (or any other Technician for that matter) will follow the stage directions when lighting a play but with ‘An Inspector Calls’ that’s exactly what I’m going to do.  In the text Priestly calls for “The lighting should be pink and intimate until the Inspector arrives, and then it should be brighter and harder.”  This is a fairly broad description but is essentially what is needed in this play and is achieved fairly easily by having two contrasting general lighting states, which is what we have in this production.  The first state is a warm wheat coloured wash and the second a colder more neutral wash which is used following the Inspectors entrance.

In this production of ‘An Inspector Calls’ Neil has decided to adopt a Brechtian approach which I hope will also translate to the final lighting design. The lighting is very much ‘in vision’ throughout with bits of rigging etc obvious from the auditorium. The pointing / highlighting of certain scenes and passages will see an obvious change in lighting state. As I mentioned earlier, colour will play an important part of the lighting design with a mixture of conventional tungsten lanterns and more modern LED fixtures being used to create the overall lighting design. 

 I will be making use of side lighting from boom stands and lighting from very severe low and high angles. These methods of lighting are not always comfortable for an audience to look at as they create shadows and hotspots on the faces of actors. Those of you who are familiar with the text will see where I am going with this...

I hope you enjoy the production and come a little bit closer to understanding “Who Killed Eva Smith ?”

Aneurin Brown...

Frances, Sheila, The Inspector and learning those lines!

Hi my name is Frances and I play the part of Sheila Birling. I have acted with Blackwood Little
Theatre once before with the original cast of Godfather Death and after a fair old break, I have been welcomed back with open arms by the theatre and its members, to act with them again. I’m a
teacher by profession, originally coming from a performing arts background, my degree is in Drama
and I am also a classically trained singer. However as I no longer teach these subjects I felt it was
important to keep my skills and love of acting going, and Blackwood Little Theatre’s experienced
members and high standards has drawn me back to be a part of it once more.

Frances Jarman rehearsing 

It is a big commitment but once you are in rehearsals,  the energy and involvement that everyone has with their characters and with the process is obvious. I personally take the approach of concentrating on ‘how’ I deliver lines; its pace, tone and volume are things I experiment with during the rehearsal process as I want to get the emotion conveyed and even felt by the audience just right. Practising accents, mannerisms and movement then seem to flow a little easier as I feel I have better established the motivation behind my character. Lines are something that I learn without the use of script in the latter stages, as for one they are already fairly fluid and secondly, the rehearsal process has already helped with the repetition of lines and learning where my cues are.

I usually learn my lines by pacing up and down a corridor back and forth; a habit I’ve adopted since my school days in ‘A’ level Drama. Some habits die hard
but this one I don’t think is necessarily a bad one! The cast for ‘An Inspector Calls’ are professional,
experienced, fun, energetic and it is a pleasure to work with you all once more!

Not a Real Inspector at All

We are nearing the end of rehearsing An Inspector Calls and performances will begin on 11th March. Books are pretty much down and the task of real acting is beginning. The characters and the ideas of the play have been discussed and shaped and are now being absorbed and, hopefully realised(brought to life) by actors and a director who share a vision of this old, somewhat dated, and much performed play.  We are beginning to really see if we have found a way to bring the thing to life again, for a new audience; this time of predominantly 15-16 year olds students, over a thousand of whom will see the play in its run.

On the page, it is a very conventional piece of theatre: it works like the 'well-made play'.  It has one interior setting and takes place in real time: the writing is, in places, clunky and unconvincing - particularly in the character of Sheila - so there are challenges to overcome.

At a time when the play really did seem to have passed its sell-by date, in the late eighties/ early nineties, it was brought back to life in a stunning, award winning production by the National Theatre, which has run ever since. This is a mixed blessing, as now all productions of this play can seem over- informed by that ground- breaking production.

Vic Mills in rehearsal as Inspector Goole

Our challenge is to bring this play to life in a way which is neither dependant on a conventional staging or on the more recently dominating ones.
We see the play as overtly political as well as social in its message: it makes a plea for society to mean something in world where it means a great deal less than it did when Priestley wrote the play.

We have the table at the centre, as a hub, around which the characters circle and circle like caged animals at times, like gladiators fighting for the entertainment of an audience at times, too.  Our staging is representational not realist - the room is not a room but a stage, the drink are props and the doors and walls are not intended to look real.  Some of them can be seen through.  Colours and lighting change to reflect mood and ideas.  The action pauses and characters move to new positions.  We are giving the play a Brechtian treatment - in keeping with its ideas, if not with Priestley's approach to theatricality.

JB Priestley

The language and manners of the characters is artificial in places, particularly that of Sheila, Gerald, Eric and Mrs Birling: Birling himself is more visceral and real.  I am struggling to make the language and character of the Inspector real.  I see him, not as a ghostly conscience of the people, but as a Marxist agitator, who has burst into this family as part of a plot to expose them- I doubt that is what Priestley had in mind, but it helps me make sense of what I am doing there.

In performance, I am trying to deliver a man with an appalled and outraged sense of justice, who is sickened and angered by these people with their privilege, selfishness and casual cruelty.  He is suppressing this anger for most of his time on stage, just letting it burst out at points.  I am trying to show his indifference to the manners and social expectations of the Birlings in every move and gesture.

Gareth Baskerville as Gerald with Vic Mills as Goole

This is my third time playing the role and each time I see it differently to an extent. Just over two weeks to go to get this man right, and to bring this whole vision of ours to life. With so many youngsters seeing live, serious theatre for the first time- it feels like a hell of a responsibility.

Vic Mills