Black Comedy
Every season, Theatre in the Round brings a comedy to the arena stage and their audiences love them, especially the British ones. This time, it is Black Comedy, a play using an inverted lighting scheme that provides a techy-like experience for the audience: Used to seeing actors perform in full dramatic lighting, this play asks the audience to suspend what they see and pretend the actors are in a complete blackout (a fuse has blown in the “apartment"). Black Comedy takes more than an hour to tell its standard-issue story of a young artist, Brindsley (Josh Carlson), who has invited a rich collector to his flat to view his work on the very same night that his hoity-toity fiancé Carol (Kaitlin Klemencic) plans to introduce him to her fussbudget-y conservative father Colonel Melkett (Don Maloney). Complications ensue: The young artist, has “borrowed” furniture and art objects from his antique dealer neighbor Harold (Matt Saxe), in hopes of impressing the collector; naturally Harold turns up unexpectedly. So does Clea (Kendra Alaura), Brindsley’s former girlfriend, who flits around the dark wreaking rather gratuitous havoc on her ex’s already catastrophic evening.
To provide still photographs for this action was a significant challenge for a photographer. It is necessary for the viewer of the production photographs to see how it might be that the actors are really stumbling around in the dark, yet, at the same time, conveying the character actions that they are trying to carry out (the ones that the audience actually sees in full lighting). To do this, I used a technique that emulates the famous “Rembrandt lighting” that The Master used to emphasize the focus of his paintings. In these photographs, the actors seem to be lit by some ambiguous source that highlights them, and their acting shows them relating to one another and to the darkness itself. The pictorial result is very, very dramatic, yet it also shows how the actors worked inside this theatrical format inside the arena stage with the key element of the plot…complete darkness.
Brian Joyce directed this and did a wonderful job. The acting is tight and we'll staged. The set is an interesting combination of furniture and steps that predictably lead to stumbling, falls, trips, and bumping into one another - When Brindsley tries to remove some furniture in total darkness it will have you falling out of your own seat. The actors were so convincing, that I actually came to believe I was not seeing fully lighted action but the real darkness of the blown-fuse apartment instead. Well done!
To provide still photographs for this action was a significant challenge for a photographer. It is necessary for the viewer of the production photographs to see how it might be that the actors are really stumbling around in the dark, yet, at the same time, conveying the character actions that they are trying to carry out (the ones that the audience actually sees in full lighting). To do this, I used a technique that emulates the famous “Rembrandt lighting” that The Master used to emphasize the focus of his paintings. In these photographs, the actors seem to be lit by some ambiguous source that highlights them, and their acting shows them relating to one another and to the darkness itself. The pictorial result is very, very dramatic, yet it also shows how the actors worked inside this theatrical format inside the arena stage with the key element of the plot…complete darkness.
Brian Joyce directed this and did a wonderful job. The acting is tight and we'll staged. The set is an interesting combination of furniture and steps that predictably lead to stumbling, falls, trips, and bumping into one another - When Brindsley tries to remove some furniture in total darkness it will have you falling out of your own seat. The actors were so convincing, that I actually came to believe I was not seeing fully lighted action but the real darkness of the blown-fuse apartment instead. Well done!