By Grace Liu
As actors took the stage on opening night of “Night Night, Roger Roger” earlier this month, a spotlight followed each one, illuminating the unique mannerisms of their characters. The lighting design, by fourth-year Theater and Dance major Sophie Lynd, captured the audience’s attention as a jovial crowd chuckled along with the performers reciting their lines.
Lynd brought the UC Santa Barbara Studio Theater stage to life as the comedic play’s lighting designer, a role and skill often overlooked, particularly when done well. But, with a combination of technical expertise and artistic expression, Lynd finds she is able to enhance the emotional impact of her productions through lighting.
UCSB Theater and Dance student Sophie Lynd is the lighting designer for “Night Night, Roger Roger” and “Full Circles,” both of which were performed this March. (Photo courtesy of the Daily Nexus)
Lynd’s passion for the technical side of theater started in her Bay Area high school when the technical theater club advisor spoke to her elective drama class, where she had realized she had zero desire to be an actor. Instead, she chose to pursue technical theater and, once she got to UCSB, Lynd delved into lighting design.
“In the theater department right now, I’m one of the only lighting students … It’s nice because I get a lot of opportunities to design big stuff, but also little showcases that friends are putting on,” Lynd said.
Theater lighting is both technical lighting and lighting design. The lighting designer creates the light plot — an aerial drawing of the light placements in the theater — and technical lighting physically realizes that plan by hanging the lights and preparing the light board for the design team. This division of labor is nothing new in other branches of theater: The scenic designer will have a vision, and the carpenter makes that happen; the costume designer will have a vision, and the seamstress makes that happen.
“In the professional world, designers usually don’t actually program their own shows but, in an educational environment, we do, just because there are not enough of us to have a separate programmer,” Lynd said.
In addition to “Night Night, Roger Roger,” Lynd recently worked on “Full Circle,” a UCSB Dance Company repertoire showcase. For the latter, Lynd designed and adapted previous lighting designs. This is the show that Lynd will travel with, as the theater department and the UCSB Dance Company present it this spring in Italy, Norway, Poland, Latvia and Czech Republic.
In preparation, Lynd entered “tech week” with the rest of the performers and stage crew, a week prior to each of the premieres. While the performers had been working on their pieces for months with auditions and rehearsals, the designers had been completing their background work. Lynd created the light plot and went through the script, putting cues where needed. Then, when all elements came together in the theater during tech week, Lynd’s designs came to life.
Technical rehearsal week in full swing as performers and crew work to integrate all theatrical elements in advance of the recent opening of “Night Night, Roger Roger.”
Photo by Sophie Lynd
Although tech week officially takes up every day of the week from 6 -11 p.m., Lynd often goes into the theater between classes or stays late to fix the lighting.
“It’s something that I kind of know is going to take over my whole schedule, in every bit of free time out of class … I try to get ahead on work, try to take breaks when I can.”
Set to graduate this spring, Lynd is looking forward to continuing in the industry professionally and she already has a couple of shows in Los Angeles and New York City under her belt. At the Matrix Theater in L.A., Lynd served as the assistant lighting designer for “A Great Wilderness,” produced by Rogue Machine Theater Company. At the Theaterlab in NYC this spring, Lynd is the production stage manager for “Bulletproof Unicron,” produced by Center Stage Theater.
Wanting both a professional and a teaching career, Lynd plans to return to school to obtain a master’s degree.
“I just need to take a break from school and go work in the professional world and see what I need to improve on,” she said, “then go back to school with that mindset.”
Grace Liu is a third-year Psychological & Brain Sciences major pursuing a Professional Writing minor at UC Santa Barbara. She wrote this for her Writing Program course, Digital Journalism.