A Piece of My Heart

Lighting Designer

Date: January 2009

Group: Edina High School Thespians

I worked as the lighting designer for this show. This was my first time working on lights.

A Piece of My Heart is a play about the experiences of women, primarily nurses, in the Vietnam War. It is told through a series of flashbacks. Because of the way the play was constructed, I could use more intense colors and more impressionistic lighting during the show. The general idea for the lighting was that the people speaking had all of the attention. Sounds easy, right? That part was. Area lighting along with a few specials drew attention to the proper person. The harder part was picking the colors to be used in the show. Vietnam was to have a warmer color set, more reds, oranges and yellow-greens. When the story shifted to America, post-Vietnam, the colors shifted to a deep blue.

Those were the basics. There were also 3 footlights placed at the front of the stage. These were primarily used to create a disjointed feel to the scene. A platform behind the cyc and scrim was lit from behind to cast shadows of actors on the platform. Sometimes this was used for flashbacks within flashbacks, other times it was used to show action happening around the characters in the story, as shown in the picture above. Color scrollers added additional color to some scenes, and a black light was used for a few scenes.

This was my first time designing lights, so I had lots of help with this. I'd like to thank Becky for guiding me through this intimidating process, and all of the cast and crew for supporting me during the show. That 12-hour tech rehearsal was worth it. Thanks guys. One more detail, I did not write the full light plot for the show, but I assisted in the selection of instruments as well as the hanging and focusing of lights.