Lamp Life

The Lion King is a show about a cyc. Insofar as lighting is concerned it is. I went on Tuesday night to a performance of the Lion King at the Pantages. Don Holder, who heads the lighting program at CalArts had gotten a group of us complimentary tickets, which is something you can do when you win a tony and your show has been touring for nearly a decade. The show is neat. It’s not so different from the movie and the costumes are clever. I’m not breaking any new ground there. It’s entertaining, a hybrid of commercial family entertainment with some high art artists at the wheel so that it is clever. That’s the formula.

What was the most interesting thing to me was the addressing of a question I’ve had stewing in my head for a while. That is: What is a light? Is it its technology? Is it the source, or is it the light it emits? Is a fluorescent, fluorescent without the sources being visible? Or is it the color temperature and spectrum of the light it emits? In one scene the Cyc has this low dusty glow to it, something shadowy (to go with the song Shawdowlands) and I thought to myself at those fluorescents? No one else really noticed, but in that moment it looked like the lighting conditions of Fluorescents. So when we were talking to the lighting supervisor for the show afterwards and saw a long row of dimmable fluorescent tubes I felt pretty good about calling that.

But I wonder, how I could tell? Was it the emotional response to the lighting condition? Was I able to relate to the color temperature and coloring rendering to understand that this light was a fluorescent fixture? Did it have more to do with the way the light hits the cyc, with the 360-degree spill creating a bright band and tapering, and then meeting with the bounce off the bounce drop behind it? Was it because the light interacted with the items around it the way fluorescents do or because the light was that particular type or both?

I want to think that Don’s choice of using the fluorescent was because he could not accomplish that look without it. It wasn’t about putting the right color in an MR-16 strip light, which would have taken up as much or less room (considering the ballasts being remote). It was about the color, and the way the light looked and the temperature and all of that, because that’s what makes the choice.

So I wonder if it is possible to recreate that appearance in a believable way without the actual light. Or, because this use was not a visible source, does it matter what someone believes is fluorescent as opposed to what it is? Can you put a fluorescent on stage without the untrained eye knowing it’s fluorescent? And can you create what the untrained sees as fluorescent without a fluorescent fixture, just as the cultural assumption of what that color and tone would be. Can I use Gel to make a room appear fluorescent?

As a side note, there were a number of Arc sources in the moving lights, and you could always tell when the movers were on, as opposed to conventions, with the color of the light. This bothered me. I found it jarring to see the juxtaposition, and to see what was suddenly a greenish blue light after I had white balanced to the tungsten. It is all a part of that idea of source’s relationship to the phenomenology of the light.

I saw The Light in the Piazza this last weekend. I went with Justine and some of her work friends. I sat far away, as per usual for me when at the Ahmanson. It was pretty, certainly. There was a scene in the first act which had a very clever use of light and movement in the set. The second act was a little less together, a little less designed, a little less into the plot. This seems contrary to what I usually see, with the character development keeping anything really interesting from happening first. 

Now, Justine is fluent in Italian. So the third of the play that was in Italian was translated and apparently it’s just the dude telling his love how hot she is. That’s good enough of a reason for love at first sight. But beyond this we also learn that this girl may be mentally and emotionally retarded due to being kicked in the head by a horse. So the moral of the story is that simply Lust and a Language Barrier will overcome a language barrier… errr… I mean I don’t look to large Broadway musicals for extreme depth, but I do expect a fairly standard moral of some variety. 

So there you have it. 

I’m sorry, but i still don’t understand why this musical exists. From the moment I saw it was coming I didn’t get it. Having now seen a preview of it I’m even more baffled. Not only is it in no way unique as a story, but the talent is less and they decided to set it in the 1970s’ disco days. Why? The only useful purpose that held was to add some musical numbers of comic relief that had little or nothing to do with the main plot… The goons seducing nuns? The goons dressing ridiculous… why? Isn’t the story about faith and turning a new leaf? So you waste my time with cliché and shtick silliness that is irrelevant to that story?

The characters are also single dimensional, they have little to no arc, and by the time there is a hint of one it’s too late, I stopped caring. Not that I need arc to be happy with a character, but a conventional linear theater piece like this is dead in the water without it.

Oh, and the last song is called mirror ball and EVERY other line is about a mirror ball and THERE IS NO MIRROR BALL. I think that’s indicative. Sure everything else is shiny like a mirror ball… so what? Are we trying to subvert the audience’s expectations here? Cause nothing else does so there isn’t integrity to this assumption.

The set is crowded into the space and it always feels like the actors are about to fall off the stage. The choreography is sort of boring, but it’s hard to tell if this was anyone’s fault or that the actors were trying not to hit each other on the crowded stage.

Ultimately it needs work; there is something to the whole thing that works. The movie was good, not like a great cinematic effort, but funny and good and worth the money I remember spending on it (lest we forget the sequel). If they just did a staged version of that musical it would have been better… even with the changed up songbook with disco songs instead of oldies doo-wop style tunes. But the schlock factor kills it.

I’d say rent the movie for $1.50 and call it a night.

Culture Imperialism is alive and well at the Fowler. That seems a little harsh. It’s not evil or anything, just more of the same western focus on fetishized objects. I went to the opening of the new exhibit at the Fowler museum Saturday Night, The Art of Being Tuareg: Sahara Nomads in a Modern World. I just copied and pasted that title into this post and it is even more interesting in the presupposition that there is a consideration of the modern presence of the Tuareg.

The exhibit is in line with an issue of National Geographic. Pretty pictures of the Tuareg, the camel riding, blue turban-wearing semi-nomads of the Sahara, but the focus is on the arts and crafts of the people. It is interesting. I previously knew nothing about the Tuareg beyond the VW connection. They remind me of the Ilkhanids of the Asia continent. I assume that his has a lot to do with the nomadic life style and the cultural concentration of portable and useful tradable goods in the visual arts. Also they are a marginally Muslim culture, so there is that connection as well. But this isn’t at all explored and I think that’s the issue I have with it.

If the Fowler is a anthropological museum should there be a comparative analysis of any kind? I don’t know, I don’t work there and I’m not an anthropologist beyond my attachment to Art history. I felt like I was suppose to look at some nice leatherwork and think about how quaintly adorned these people must be. There was minimal focus on the idea of these Nomads in the modern world. One display contained the recreation of the workshop of a now stationary Nigerian Tuareg family and had video playing on a mid 1980s color TV (oh look, poverty) with rabbit ears showing the artisan at work. There were a couple of videos towards the exit too, which were arranged it what I presume to be something evoking the conventional seating of the Tuareg. For those of us used to the gallery set up of the United States and not sitting on the floor, the TVs were inconveniently out of place in opposition to the display of everything else. And with the blue haired crowd, I can’t imagine they were willing to get down there, like it was an empty gesture. The big connection to the modern world, and what I see as a connection to the patrons I saw, was the entry hallway into the exhibit that focused on the appropriation of Tuareg motifs into Hermes accessories and fashion. They went so far as to put up mirrors in this area, like I was supposed to see in my garments how my clothing was connected. Beyond not really having that connection, I didn’t understand why this was at the front of the exhibition before I’ve seen any items that I’m supposed to understand were appropriated.

Also it felt like it continued throughout the other two galleries. One had an exhibit called Intersections that was all about the thematic intersection of indigenous art and there was no representation, as far as I noticed, of European or American folk art beyond some contemporary Latin American work. The other had an exhibition of silver from the collection. So next to one another were equal sized exhibitions of decorative luxury Eurocentric goods next to the folk art of everywhere else.

Perhaps I am being hypercritical, as I think about the Menil collection and the Witness gallery with its collection of artifacts the responded to western culture and the personal collections of the western artists in the collection show an effort towards declaring reciprocal influence. They too have galleries of antiquities and culturally objects in a similar fashion, but there is a clear bridge between the collections, an idea that they are related, not separate things.

Anyway, the objects are interesting, but the set up does feel like its not for a contemporary audience, a world view, decentralized culture audience. It’s playing to the patrons. I’m sure that is a necessary evil, but it feels insensitive. And when those patrons are rude, rich people like the ones that seemed to very offended by my presence I am reluctant to participate.