“It’s so nice to do something honest,” he says. In each new theater, Dilliard says, “he’s put an incredible amount of time placing the actors according to where the light is.”ĭ.C.-based lighting assistant Max Doolittle joined the show for this local leg. The first act, according to Serrand, is one hour and 28 minutes, give or take no more than a minute.ĭilliard marvels at Serrand’s discipline, allowing deep shadows and repositioning actors rather than tweaking the lights. The illusion of real time means that the performance clocks in reliably night in and night out. “This allowed us to separate the ways light would get in, to create shadows depending on time of day,” Serrand explains.
LIGHT COLUMN STAGE LIGHTING DESIGN WINDOWS
Soaring windows and tall columns dominate the set. The design, by Serrand and Thomas Buderwitz, was partly inspired by the Parisian landmarks St-Gervais-et-St-Protais and the Hôtel National des Invalides.
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To keep the “Tartuffe” lighting dynamic yet natural, the role of the set’s architecture is huge, Dilliard says. This is essentially the same production, now generated by the Moving Company, a Minneapolis outfit created by Serrand and Epp after Jeune Lune’s demise. Epp, a longtime troupe member, played Tartuffe in 19 in a show that Serrand says was a response to the 1990s culture wars. Serrand ran Theatre de la Jeune Lune (Theater of the New Moon) in Minneapolis until it closed in 2008, only three years after the organization had won the regional theater Tony Award. “It’s not extremists who are dangerous, but believers.” “The religious extremists are getting stronger, from all sides,” Serrand says, explaining his attachment to the play. The West Coast press has called the production “fascinatingly sinister” and “relevant as ever, scarier than usual,” with Epp’s two-faced Tartuffe as a malevolent operator whom one reviewer likened to “House of Cards” schemer Frank Underwood. Serrand uses the word “brutal” to describe the play, and this dark version’s racy-looking ads feature a leering, peroxide-blond Steven Epp in a wardrobe-malfunction blatantly exposing his chest. It was originally so controversial that Molière rewrote it several times, trying to overcome objections by religious censors and the court of the Sun King, Louis XIV. “Tartuffe” depicts a religious faker who takes over a gullible follower’s household from top to bottom.
![light column stage lighting design light column stage lighting design](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/4NhnYwn58WY/maxresdefault.jpg)
“We had a rule that we weren’t going to cheat,” says lighting designer Marcus Dilliard.