Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1978 - 36

side, as is traditionally done. The context of the lighting was
an assemblage-type sculpture of wrecked cars and automobile parts, hoods, grills, doors, fenders, creating an environment-like space for the action.
The characters carried different types of illumination: Milo,
a rotating, red warning light that lit half his face; Imanu, a 360
degree lantern, higher intensity, white light; Dilla, Imanu and
Tope lighted by flashlights carried by other actors to represent their need of other people. The whole environment was
constantly reshaped by changing light from the sources
within it-red tail lights, yellow directionals, and so on. The
lighting gave its own strange animation to the setting and the
action.
Flickering green, red, amber and white lights pick out
the broken, curved landscape of the set, feature by
feature. As they flash on and off, the hues and answering shadows seem to shift the hump of metal spasmodically back and forth. The actors, when they come on,
are caught in similar, jerky, magic-lantern movement;
they are never wholly out of the darkness or in the light.
(Albert Bermel, The New Leader, April 25, 1966.)

In general, the technique of internal lighting may be contrasted with Brechtian lighting in which the instruments are
visible as just what they are, but still remain to a degree
external to the work. With internal lighting, as here, the
sources are present as elements integral to the production,
which is its own light source. Lighting also made the audience, seated in arena staging, a part of the performance,
with light being placed beneath their benches illuminating
their legs to the knees.
In a somewhat similar manner, offstage sounds were integrated with the performance with a more or less constant
"chorus" of groans and moans from the couples copulating in
the "rooms" provided by the pile of wrecked automobiles.
The Unnamable, based on the novel by Samuel Beckett,
continued the programming of light within the performance in
a new way. A revolving drum, nine feet high and nine feet in
diameter, with the narrator inside was placed within a square
of footlight troughs. Each side of the square was composed of
three troughs parallel to each other and each divided into
units of three so that they were capable of rendering the
trig rams of the I Ching system of fortune telling. These continued to flash on and off in sections, as described below, and
the drum continued to emit flashes of light as it turned. Characters from the novel moved in a direction counter to that of
the drum and illuminated themselves with small flashlights.
Sound-music created on a Moog synthesizer was an integral
factor in the production, a concrete music score of roaring,
whining and grinding sounds that seemed to some to be
"aural aggression" because of the pitch and intensity attained. Still, the production was essentially contemplative in
mode. Playback of the sound required eight speakers, six
tape recorders and amplifiers, and a stop watch.
Dunn's description of the creative process for The UnnamabIe is interesting.
Initial attempts with the flashes of light, the special
lighting instruments and their spatial placement were
{at first] unbearably gratuitous. The thought kept nagging me that when the proper decisions were made I
would not be engaged in the task of "lighting the production." I had a very strong feeling that all of the light
content should convey conceptual information as well
as sensory and emotional effect. It would light itself.
Starting with placement of the lights at the perimeter
of the space, decisions were made and then negated.
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Theatre Design & Technology

Each time I confronted the problem the lights moved
imaginatively inward, closer to the center. It became
increasingly apparent; the lighting instruments were
going to invade and obstruct the free unencumbered
space. Finally nothing could be done. They now invade
the space of it.
The design is a meditation object that embodies
stasis and change. Thwarts, vortex, conceptual and affective development, afterimages, etc., are all built into
the structure.
Appearances were analyzed for passive and active
actions and revealed the beginning light structures.
N

s
As the event progresses each line is changed to its
opposite by a system of sequential flashes. Example:

1
_ _--=2=----::-:~-:solid line
black 9 pause 6 black 6 pause 9 black
broken line black 6 pause 9 black 9 pause 6 black

Section 1 establishes primary identity and predicts
change.
Section 2 establishes new identity and predicts the
delayed change that is to come during sequences 1314-15 when they are disposed of immediately prior to
the final resistant rush toward it.
The movement of relationships is clockwise. Duration
of each sequence and other specifics of light information were determined arithmetically and conceptually
using the text that applies to each momentarily existing
structure and involved line. Each sequence has unique
identity and can be read by all members of the audience.
Purge was again a performance sculpture or "meditation
object" in an integrated modern mode, that of primary or
systemic art. The performance space was dominated by four
columns supporting disks that were sixteen feet in diameter,
two at six inches off the floor, two at twelve feet, and two at
twenty-four feet. They were placed eqUidistant at twenty feet
from a center point. The disks were the production'S internal
sources of illumination, and were color keyed, producing
colors in constant motion, so that one could see the movement of colors and their intersections, afterimages and optical illusions in which the posts seemed to move. (The source
of the colors was red, blue, and green 25 watt bulbs.) Two
performers, a male and a female, moved through this performance space doing T'ai Chi exercises, thus emphasizing
the austere, abstract, conceptual nature of the piece.
US ITT/Summer, 1978

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