L is for LIGHTING DESIGN

Welcome to Yes, This Will Be On the Test.

Waving to visitors, new followers, and fellow A to Z participants. I’m sending virtual hugs to you all for taking a moment to stop by.

I’ll be sharing my “take-aways.” All those snigglets, golden nuggets, and lessons learned from other creative sources.

Scroll down this link to find other wonderful A to Z participants.

In my previous life, I was a theatrical lighting designer. Lighting design is expected to fulfill multiple goals onstage, such as:

MOOD - How do you want the audience to feel?

Sense of fun - Singin' in the Rain from the  Bon Voyage Shipboard Review - Queen Mary

Dramatic foreshadowing - In the Sweet Bye and Bye - Back Alley Theater

Nightmare sequence - An Original Jimmy Shine - UCLA

VISIBILITY and FOCUS - What and how much do you want to reveal to the audience? Where do you want them to look?

Found a Peanut - Back Alley Theater 

DIMENSIONALITY - Define the shape of the actors and the scenery. At times light becomes part of the scenery.

St. Joan - UCLA

Hawk - UCLA

Hawk - UCLA

TAKE AWAY:

Even though lighting was my visual form of storytelling in the pictures above, the same elements and purposes must resonate to create depth in the stories I tell with words.

Have you brought elements from other art forms into your writing?

U is for UCLA

Twenty-Six Days of Creative Inspiration

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I am a Bruin. You might call me an Uber-Bruin. I earned a BA in theater arts and an MFA in theater design/technology from UCLA as well as serving on the design faculty of UCLA's Department of Theater for over a decade.

There was no better place for a creative soul to be nurtured than UCLA's Department of Theater. I entered as an actress and left as a lighting designer. Along the way I had two plays produced. Talent and artistic risk taking was always encouraged at UCLA.

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It was not only my teachers/mentors that inspired me, but the amazing peers I was surrounded by. Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson who wrote Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure were in my playwriting class. Ed went on to pen Men in Black. I was fortunate to work with Ed again on "It's Garry Shandling's Show. He was a writer and I was the assistant art director. I designed lighting and sound for shows that starred Tim Robbins. I could name drop for days, but I will spare you.The joke in my family is that everyone who I went to school with at UCLA is famous except for me. 

You couldn't turn around at UCLA without bumping into talent and inspiration.

If you have college bound kids in your life who crave a creative playground make sure they give UCLA a peek.

How did your college days inspire your future? Any fellow Bruins out there in Bloglandia?

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