A Bright Room Called Day

by Tony Kushner

Director: Lily Wolff
Stage Manager: Sam Bruno
Scenic Designer: Austin Mueck
Lighting Designer: Matthew Murphy
Projection Designer: Trevor Stoneburner
Costume Designer: Glenda Wolfe
Sound Designer: Christian Aderholt
Dramaturg: Olivia Wise

A Bright Room Called Day was performed as the Senior Capstone project for the graduating class of 2018. It was performed in the Jones Theatre in the Sarofim School of Fine Arts at Southwestern University. The screens were used as windows to show the time and season of scenes in the apartment, video of one of the characters who interacted with other characters, displayed historical information about Berlin in WWII, and provided dates for each of the scenes. Zillah is entirly projected and interacts with the other characters in the script through pre-recorded scenes.

Process

The projections were run with sound cues using Qlab with two projectors mounted on the catwalks. The area for each of the three screens were mapped out with MadMapper and exported to Qlab screens. The historical context slides included drawings as if it came from a journal of the time, describing what was happening leading up to WWII, the journal scrolled across the screen with historical footage played on the side panels which showed the Third Reich's rise to power.

Original drawings and aged text were created to project the date before each scene and historical context slides were created to show the rise of the Third Reich as the show progressed. The show also featured a projected actor who we recorded and her character existed only on the projected screens.