Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1999 - 21

same process one might employ in designing a
small studio piece with limited lighting inventory and resources. Pilbrow's process is uniform for large and small productions.
The process begins \\~th design meetings
\\~th the director and scene designer. Pilbrow
declares, "Hopefully you have a chance to influence the design of the set, to influence how
it will be lit-and unfortunately it does not always happen."
"Ob~ously one reads the piece, a lot," he
goes on to say. "I usually like to create a S)TIopsis

on two or three sheets of paper. The synopsis
combines all the ~sual moments of the play. "
The synopsis allows Pilbrow to analyze
the play carefully, making decisions about the
mood and given circumstances of each scene.
At this point he also starts to consider what the
motivation is for the lighting in each scene. According to Pilbrow, his choices are usually
rooted in some sort of naturalistic lighting effect, even if the moment is stylized. "You start
to think what is this scene? Is it realistic? Is it
abstract? One goes through and says, 'is this

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sunshine or sunset? Are they are around a
campfire? I need this kind of light from the left
and this from the right,' and so on."
Pilbrow describes this early part of his
design process as "the sort of first mulling
around in one's head." It allows for an over\~ew of the fabric of the piece as a whole.
The ne),,1 step is what Pilbrow describes
as "a real old-fashioned acting area breakup."
He goes on to say, "I usually try to make it very
three-dimensional. I don't always try to end up
with four or six spots in an acting area. But you
usually end up \\~th that and all the motivating
light and all the other stuff. So you end up with
I\\~ce as much equipment as anyone \\ill let
you have."
At that point Pilbrow goes through an editing process to try and achieve the artistic effect he
desires \\~th a minimum amount of equipment.
He says, "You find yourself asking if you really
need that piece of equipment. You try until you
get something reasonable and practical."
Usually it is financial considerations that determine the final choices. Pilbrow laughs, "If
Garth Drabinsky is prodUcing, you take ten percent off. If anyone else is prodUcing you take sL\1y
percent of the equipment out of the design."
Pilbrow does some ~sualization work for
the show. It is ob~ous that he misses the use of
his beloved model theatre from the early days
in his career. He first saw a model theatre for
lighting when an actor in the first show he lit
introduced him to English lighting designer
Michaell orthem.
Pilbrow thought the idea was so brilliant
he built his own version in the basement of Her
Majesty's Theatre, the space Theatre Projects
initially worked from. "I had this model theatre that I started as a kid in school. I built a
new model out of it and I used to show people
what the lighting was going to look like. You
could be terribly accurate. These wonderful
little instmments, built by Robert Stanbury, the
lighting teacher at the Wimbledon School of
Art, were really half-inch scale models. The
light was accurate for the scale. I would bring
people up to the shop and show them what I
would do to light their show.
"The fixtures focused and had a beanl. You
could create the acting areas on the model and
show patterns and beam projections. For the first
I\vo or three years we used to religiously try to use
the model to create the show."
He goes on to say, "We used every single
instrument and we'd light the whole thing. My
first show at the Old Vic was Richard 11. We lit
the whole show scene by scene on the model
T7>&T

MER

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1999