Currently running on Broadway are both Suffs and Uncle Vanya. Both are illuminated by the immensely talented Lighting Designer Lap Chi Chu. His work always underpins the narrative in a thoughtful and substantive way, leaning into the real artistry of design, that it be part of the storytelling.
Lighting in both these shows play an important part in helping the audience understand the context. Talk about how as a designer you approach your design to fulfill that role.
Let’s start with Suffs, which is a period piece. Early 1900s, 1910s. However, we wanted it to be telling the story from a modern perspective. So, therefore we allowed ourselves to use all our modern technology of storytelling and not stay period everywhere. That really loosened up our design tools, especially for lighting, that we could feel very modern and feel like we’re telling a story about the past rather than try to illustrate the past completely.
With Vanya, it was really about hearing what the actors were doing. That too was modern. It wasn’t trying to be the past. And so again, that just enabled us to stylize it more and to be more expressionistic about it. We were really able to do that once rehearsal started and we saw what the actors found in the text and how we were amplifying their feelings from the text. So that one was very hands-on for that reason. It was interactive with the cast, and everybody just gave so much to the text. You really have to listen to what is meant by the characters as opposed to exactly the words that were coming out of their mouths. So yeah, it was very playful, I guess from a design point of view. We did not know a hundred percent what would come out, until we let it evolve from the rehearsal room.
Let’s first talk about Uncle Vanya. The show is very minimal and contemporary, no specific time period, all which puts a lot of heavy lifting on the lighting.
Well, that’s back to why I wanted to do this in the first place, that exploration, should it feel like a cue at this moment based on what an actor is doing. Certainly with Uncle Vanya, there are what seems like private monologue moments, but then there are moments that turn into bigger cueing moments when we wanted to explore how a scene could, and wanted, to be more private. That’s very true at the end of Act One. Normally this was not a monologue scene, but Anika [Noni Rose] is acting it into a private moment where we stylized it a bit there. It was really a function of exploring that text and what that moment deserved with fresh eyes. There were several of those, where Chekhov seemed to gave a monologue or private thought, but then we amplified some more scenes that just went that direction when it came out of rehearsal. Probably our production of Uncle Vanya might have felt more stylized than a typical production because the actors delivered something that wanted to be amplified.
What were some of your key equipment choices in your Vanya design?
What’s always really important is color. For me, oddly, I am not known much as the color person, but it was just so important that things look great on people’s skin. There were a lot of a ETC Lustrs just to deliver those consistent good skin tone colors. And then I had the chance to use some of their newer moving lights, the [HES] Halcyon [Gold], which had some excellent colors just to support what the Lustrs could do. The Halcyon’s color works very well with the Lustrs and also their frost, they had a great variable frost selection that I hadn’t seen in a moving light before that made it so natural looking. And the variable part was great. It could be a little more overtly a light sometimes, and sometimes just disappear and be soft. You don’t know that there’s a special or a moving light there at those moments, which was great. So that was a nice intro to actually working with the Halcyon.
Talk a bit about collaborating with Scenic Designer Mimi Lien and Costume Designer Kay Voyce on Vanya.
Oh, they’re so collaborative in nature. It was really, I think our director Lila [Neugebauer] really did that on purpose. I worked with Kay before with Lila and it’s great. And Mimi, I hadn’t worked with in a while, but it was just fantastic. The ideas shoot around and you don’t know where they came from and we’re all in each other’s field and business and that’s a good thing. Of course we have our specialties in what our roles are being the lighting designer, the set designer, the costume designer, but it was just a very conversational room through the whole process, both before we got into the theater and while we’re in the theater, so really an ideal collaboration.
And how was PRG’s support as your lighting vendor?
Great. I mean, I actually came up the Halcyon as a light to try and that was something that they had invested in, which I will absolutely use again. At PRG, we have so many choices. Sometimes when we need a medium to large quantity of a light, you have to be on board with the rental companies, so that it’s something they want to invest in and PRG invested in the Halcyon and it very much worked out. I mean, you don’t always know how consistent a lighting fixture is when you get tens or twenties or a hundred of these things; you don’t know from looking at one light in a showroom or in a demo. So, that interplay with what a rental company wants to invest in and what we use is very important. PRG has made investments that give us good choices in what we want to use.
Let’s move over then to Suffs. Talk about your approach to the design.
I feel very honored to be able to work on a show like Suffs. With each show I do, I feel like it’s an opportunity to learn about something and about its history. So being able to do Suffs, looking at that story and the script, it was just very clear while there was a suffrage movement at the time, it actually came together because of these massive individual efforts from a lot of different women. And so that’s something that we wanted to be highlighted in the design. While we have our leads, there were also everyday people important in the movement. And that was in the score. So, we wanted to highlight those individual efforts, which ends up being a lot of highlighting individual voices in different numbers.
The cyc lighting also looks beautiful.
The cyc, yes, that was a fun cyc show for us. One of the original big uses of the cyc was actually in the book early in the play, our lead Alice takes a train to DC, but when we got to the design process, we really didn’t want to do a train effect. It’s just so dramaturgically not interesting. So, we decided to make that an aspirational lighting look; it was what Alice was going towards on the train ride. Instead of showing a train, we showed a silhouette of women and her vision of the mark she wanted to create. We sort of then tracked that idea through as a gesture throughout the entire musical. We made that stylized, and that fun idea made it feel a little more modern. And while a lot of things were literal, this was a less literal moment, instead it was what it meant dramaturgically in the moment. It was a fun use of the cyc, I loved the cyc looks.
What were some of your key equipment choices on Suffs?
We had so much scenery that we did not have much overhead space for lights. So, we needed lights with shutters. We ended up with one of my favorites, the MAC Ultra Performance, for firepower and shutters and color. There were quite a few of them over stage, what we could fit. Everything had to do all multiple jobs. We just had no space. Everything was within an inch of its life, as with a lot of Broadway shows. Definitely a tight squeeze of scenery and lights. I hope they make a smaller version. So, the Ultra Performance was great, but we also did a lot of [Ayrton] Diablos because they were bright, had shutters and are small. So, those two lights really are the bulk of the rig. We just needed all that flexibility they both offer.
Tell me a little bit about collaborating with Riccardo Hernández and Paul Tazewell.
Paul’s such a legend and Ricardo is wonderful, a legend as well. I had worked with them before. I have a lot of success on Ricardo sets; I won my Lucille Lortel Award on one of his sets for Mlima’s Tale. So, I have a background with both these designers and they’re just so talented. They make life easy and together they’re driving the conversation forward with you. Paul’s white costumes are amazing. Having all those white costumes on stage at times it just glows. So yeah, they’re great to work with again, bit of a wonderful reunion.
And again PRG was your lighting vendor.
Yes, and they were great about finding all those moving lights. You might know everybody had a show opening at the same time this spring, all in the same two-week period. And just getting things was tough. We asked for quite a few MAC Ultras and Diablos and PRG come up with them, which was fantastic. Just everything was in shortage on Broadway. Pulling everything together at the time was quite a feat. We were just holding our breaths for a while. We went back and forth. And also for me, at the same time, I’m thinking, ‘oh God, I’m responsible for two shows and don’t make me choose between them’. Thankfully they never did. PRG put two different people on it and they worked things out behind the scenes and got me what I needed for both shows. They’re great about when you articulate why exactly you need something, PRG understands and they try to make it happen. That’s why they are a really good group to work with. I never felt conflicted. PRG understood why I needed certain things.
Anything else you’d like to mention about working on Suffs?
No, it’s a fantastic show. Everybody should go see it. It was quite an experience working on that fantastic production. You might know that it was done before Off-Broadway a couple of years ago. So, I understand there was editing down done from then to now on the script. Certainly, that silhouette moment that replaced the train moment was an example of that. That was part of my job to put fresh eyes on it. I like doing that kind of thing. I like to try and figure out what’s the best way to tell a story. I got to do that on Suffs and also on Vanya. Whether it’s like, don’t do a cue and just let the actor be the actor in a particular moment, or knowing in other times when you have to do a lot with the lighting. Figuring out when those different times are, that is really exciting as a designer. I really love that about designing and I got to do that on both Suffs and Uncle Vanya. I got to put on different hats and to keep an open eye for the best way to tell the story.
