Meet the Lighting Designer!

Hello Readers! We hope you have seen the show by now (if not get your tickets now! They are going really fast!) Chitra has received some incredible reviews from critics (PDX Parent & Oregon ArtsWatch).

This week we are excited to talk to our Lighting Designer, Carl Faber, who has done an incredible job creating the world of “Chitra: The Girl Prince” through his lighting design.

Q: Give us a brief introduction about who you are and what led you to a career in Lighting design.

Carl: Sure, so I’m a Portland-based theatrical designer, most often (but not always) working with lighting, for theater, musicals, dance, live music and events. That probably sounds vague, but that open frame is really important to me: I’ve had a bunch of job titles from Designer to Artist, Supervisor, Associate, Assistant, Programmer, Technician, and I’ve done those jobs all over the world, sometimes for friends, sometimes for major worldwide companies. Some designers just focus their attention on one industry or one position, and I’ve made really conscious choices in my professional career to avoid a single track…it’s made my journey unique and fun and exciting and sometimes terrifying, but I find that having a breadth of experiences to draw from makes me more engaged in the room and makes my designs more nuanced and informed, and I think that’s really key in making compelling work.

I was lucky to be introduced to theater early in life through my school’s theater program. I’ve always appreciated the role the theater played for me growing up…simply having a place to go was so valuable. I started out on stage, but fortunately for everyone, I hopped over to the technical side of things pretty quickly, hanging lights, building sets, toying with technology, and by 13, I had started to set in motion a path that would become my career. I went to high school here in Portland at Catlin Gabel, headed to Vassar for college and spent the summer of my junior year as a Lighting Intern at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. It’s wild how those early experiences can shape so much: I can pretty much connect about 95% of my colleagues, contacts, or connections all the way back, in some way, to either Vassar or Williamstown. Everything kind of grew from there. After graduation, I moved to New York City where I lived for 8 years, joined the Union (United Scenic Artists Local USA 829), worked on Broadway, helped found an immersive theater company, went back to Williamstown to run the program for two years, toured with bands, met my wife in Berlin, made the move back to Portland a few years ago and have been working locally, with some brief stints out of town, ever since.

Q: Given your background in working with so many styles of theater and storytelling, what was interesting/different about working on Chitra?

Carl: There were a lot of components that were appealing and exciting to me about this project. This was my 4th show at NWCT and I absolutely love this place. From day one on my first show, I was enormously impressed with this company’s commitment to production quality, artistic freedom, and attention to their audience, and all of that is really a testament to Sarah Jane’s leadership. I absolutely love to create here, I feel empowered and supported at every step of the way, and there’s really nothing in my professional life quite like watching the children on stage and in the audience have the experiences they get to have in this building. So, all of that is to say, knowing that NWCT was presenting this work gave me the confidence of knowing that I would have support and resources in making something special, and that’s critical to me. My first introduction to Chitra came when my wife and I attended the NWCT Auction last year, and when this show was announced as part of the season, along with the short teaser presented onstage, I remember thinking (and saying out loud): Wow…I want to be a part of that. Luckily enough, I got the call, and here we are. But, perhaps the most exciting component of working on Chitra as a designer was that I hadn’t, prior to this production, had the opportunity to light much Indian Classical Dance or Indian Theater, and I was really eager to explore designing for those worlds. I don’t think the Portland theater community gets to see shows like Chitra very often, and anytime I can be a part of something new, something that will engage an audience in a new way…I try to jump at those opportunities.

Q: You've done an incredible job creating the different worlds - one for the bandits, one for the army, one for the forest etc. - what went into creating these different looks? Was there a lot of research involved in creating these different looks for this epic tale or is it more instinct?

Carl: So much of my process is a balance between research, instinct, and response to my collaborators. I keep a picture collection in my office: a small box of inspiring images, postcards, colors, textures, shadows...a mentor of mine encouraged me to do this many years ago, and I continue to maintain and add to it…it’s incredibly valuable to me, and my go-to starting point for every project. Also, whenever I’m approaching a project at the conceptual phase, I think about surfaces on the stage that can accept light. For this project, I knew going in that the set would be simple and the costumes would be ornate and colorful, and knowing that guided me in making some of my initial decisions about how to communicate time and place through the lighting, what surfaces to light, and which fixtures to use. Finally, when I’m creating work primarily for children, I like to find opportunities to lead with a single large lighting gesture, and then fill in with more nuanced elements around it. I like to think that giving younger audiences that big gesture to latch on to helps them to more easily and fully access the world. For Chitra, I used the cyclorama (or “cyc”, the large white surface far upstage behind the action) as the leading surface for that single gesture, through color. We all have emotional responses to color and some of those associations can be somewhat universal (bright/warm colors = good, shadows/red = bad). I think children can have particularly strong and visceral feelings associated with color, so I try to activate that response in a way that I hope is helpful for them in setting the scene or communicating if something is good, bad, uplifting, complicated, etc. Large, vibrant colors are also fun, and at some level, regardless of the show’s content, activating something fun or playful is a goal of mine whenever I design for kids. So…all of that is rattling around in my brain, and what comes out is: let’s light the cyc in bright regal gold/amber for the army, dark green for the forest, and lots of shadows and ominous texture for the bandits. It’s a simplification, but it’s also just the starting point…there’s lots of room for nuance once that big gesture is established.

Q: What were your thoughts behind designing the lighting for the Indian Classical Dance numbers?

Carl: My first instincts were around color and sidelight. I knew the costumes would be colorful and intricate, so I wanted to make sure I had lots of color options in the lighting to both highlight and contrast the color in the clothes. NWCT has made a lot of really smart lighting equipment purchases in the past few years, and they’ve incorporated a whole range of color-changing, high-efficiency LED lights into their inventory, and it’s a huge resource to have those tools when I’m designing. The LED lighting is crisp and bright and great at bringing out the texture in the costumes and scenery. I’ve worked with John Ellingson and Mary (Rochon) Eggers enough to know that whatever they put onstage, it’s going to, at minimum, have glitter and sequins, and having bright, colorful lighting really helps make their sets and clothes shine. And as for sidelight: it’s the dance lighting standard, and it was always the plan, from the beginning, to incorporate a lot of it into Chitra. Typically at NWCT we’ve got big sets offstage in the wings that would hinder my ability to use booms and low sidelight, but for this project, with such a minimal set, we were really able to heavily lean on the sidelight to give dimension and sculptural shape to the performers. Frankly, I found it refreshing to finally have a show in Portland that could incorporate this much sidelight…so many of the venues in this town are either ¾ thrust or don’t have any wing space…but NWCT’s proscenium stage with it’s deep wings make it an ideal venue for really crisp sidelight.

Q: Where did you draw your inspiration from?

Carl: I’ve got a long list of people, places, and experiences that influence my work. I spent my early professional years as an Associate/Assistant to some of the most accomplished and talented theatrical lighting designers in the world. Brian MacDevitt, Justin Townsend, Ken Posner, Robert Wierzel, Jen Schriever, Ben Stanton…I was extraordinarily lucky to learn from the best. I mentored under Rui Rita as his long-time Associate on dozens of projects in New York and regionally. At one point, Rui was designing the shows aboard nearly the entire Norwegian Cruise Line fleet, and I was his lead Associate for those productions, which gave me my first opportunity to travel the world, working with what at the time was the most cutting-edge lighting technology. I find travel hugely inspiring, and I’ve been lucky enough to do a lot of it in my professional career: throughout the US, Berlin, Abu Dhabi, Shanghai, Poland. And, I find that a significant part of my perspective as theatrical designer comes from having spent a lot of time, actually, outside of the theater. Olafur Eliasson’s Weather Project at the Tate Modern, Donald Judd’s Chinati Foundation compound in Marfa, the Dan Flavin and Richard Serra collections at Dia:Beacon, Gregory Crewdson’s Twilight series…this all shaped how I think about space, volume, and light.

Q: Anything surprise you through this process?

Carl: I have to say, I was enormously impressed by the dancers in the Indian Classical Dance numbers and in their fight/training sequences. The skill, attention, and precision in their performances was stunning, truly. I was not expecting to see that professional level of performance from our young cast…they are skilled well beyond their years, and I felt really honored to be a part of this experience, both for them, and for our audiences. There’s also something that, while I wouldn’t call it surprising, I would say it was validating, and that’s the feeling of trust, support, and satisfaction I felt in working with this design/production team. I’d worked with John, Mary, Rody, Jake, Andy, Kristen, Roger, and Sarah Jane all before, and as a designer, when you have repeated opportunities to collaborate with artists you trust and admire, there’s really nothing like it. You can anticipate each other’s choices, quickly respond to their work, communicate in a kind of short-hand, all while feeling trusted and supported. It creates the conditions for good work to come out of the process, and I’m always glad when I can walk away from a project both proud of my own work, but also proud of how the team as a whole collaborated together. I love working for NWCT, so I guess I wasn’t necessarily surprised that I would feel that way…I thought I might…but it’s always satisfying when what you hope will happen, does.

Thank you so much Carl for taking the time to talk to us about this project!! We truly appreciate it!