17.10.23
Verity Hampson is one in every of Australia’s most prolific lighting designers. Her designs have featured on the SBW Stables Theatre greater than every other designer of the previous 20 years, and this 12 months she has labored on three back-to-back productions at Griffin. We sat down with Verity to ask all about her illuminating profession.
I first received into lighting design oh, gosh, in all probability about 25 years in the past. I used to be at college learning chemistry and I began doing a little lighting work as a result of it was simple work to get out of hours. I began engaged on massive rock’n’roll live shows—setting them up in a single day and doing uni through the day. And I simply type of determined that lighting was extra the place I used to be heading than chemistry. I lit occasions for a couple of years after which I went to NIDA. I used to be about 23 once I began, however I’d already labored within the business for about 5 years. I just like the visible facet of lighting and the mix of the science and the artwork. It’s a science.
My first present out of NIDA was a Michael Gow play known as Reside Acts on Stage in 2005. The Stables Theatre already had a really lengthy and wealthy historical past. So I assumed it could be a cool concept if I went round city and gathered all of the outdated lights that had beforehand lived within the outdated Nimrod’s inventory—in some unspecified time in the future that they had been despatched round to all the opposite theatres—mendacity round Belvoir and the Seymour Centre and NIDA’s basement. There’s nonetheless a couple of of them hanging round within the SBW Stables Theatre lobby, they’re very nice vintage lights. For the present I gathered all of them again up and made a type of roof out of lights by packing the lighting rig extraordinarily tight.
As a lighting designer I very a lot imagine in working my design to swimsuit the play and the manufacturing, versus forcing a method of my very own. It all the time clearly begins with the script. Then my design will get one other kick on from the set design and the concepts that come by means of pre-production conversations. From there, the lighting design simply begins to return as pictures say, within the bathe in the midst of the night time. The photographs in my head have a tendency to start out fairly abstracted, and should not contained by the practicalities of the venue I’m working in.
I’ve been working on the SBW Stables Theatre for about 20 years now, and lighting is the division, I’d say, that has modified essentially the most backstage. By way of set design on the Stables, the method is pretty just like what we have been placing on there 20 years in the past. However when it comes to lighting, expertise’s come a great distance. Today we’re in a position to do much more like with particular lighting states, often known as ‘specials’. Again then, the LED expertise we use a lot now didn’t even exist. You couldn’t put a shifting mild of any variety within the Stables till possibly 5 – 6 years in the past. It’s loopy—the number of what we are able to do in that theatre now could be a lot larger.
I’ve lighting designed the final three exhibits at Griffin—Pony, Jailbaby and Blaque Showgirls—and I’ve actually loved the range and dealing in the identical venue with shifting groups. By way of variations with my course of, every play had a distinct course of at completely different levels. For Blaque Showgirls there was clearly an extension of a present that was already profitable. Pony was a pandemic train. The core crew of that play and Eloise, the playwright, had been engaged on that script and that manufacturing for years all through the pandemic, method earlier than I received to the into the room. After which Jailbaby was nonetheless very a lot in a fluid state once we received into the rehearsal room. So yeah, despite the fact that the script is all the time the bottom from which I work, the truth of the design course of is completely different each time.
Throughout these three Griffin performs, among the lighting moments I’m most pleased with are the musical moments in Pony—the strip membership and the climax when Ginuwine’s tune Pony blasts. There’s an identical enjoyable set of musical moments in Blaque Showgirls which I actually loved plotting. There’s additionally one second in Pony when the protagonist is in the midst of her psychological breakdown and one night time somebody mentioned to me that the lighting state made the character appear like she was within the womb along with her child. The lighting state gave that impact of intimacy and introspection, which is what the play was all about—motherhood as a brand new section of life. That viewers remark all the time caught with me as a result of I heard that infants can see mild within the womb. Mild is wonderful!
Jailbaby was a heavy drama and there have been additionally challenges as a result of a significant set element was a two-way mirror, which then snowballs onto the lighting design as a result of that turns into a component that I’ve to work with. We all the time make it work, after which there was this cool impact that made the actors disappear into infinity. Designer Isabel Hudson and I’ve labored collectively so much now and we’ve developed a really fast shorthand. I imply, we’re comparable persona sorts. There’s simply no nonsense. However I imply, working as part of completely different groups is all the time a pleasure at Griffin.
Witness Verity’s lighting designs for Blaque Showgirls till 21 October, 2023.
