Tag Archive: Jess Bernberg

1. White Light Goes into Overflow at Bush Theatre

   15 December 2020 13:58 Leave a Comment

   

   Ever since it was founded in 1972, the Bush Theatre has become renowned for staging ground-breaking work from some of the world’s most exciting artists. Located in West London, it recently re-opened  with the world premiere of  Overflow, written by Travis Alabanza, one of the UK’s most prominent trans voices. Performed in the venue’s main Holloway space, it features a lighting design by Jess Bernberg who approached  White Light to provide the lighting equipment.   

   Overflow  is a welcome return to live performance for the iconic Bush Theatre, as well as Jess herself. She explains:  “Safe to say, it has been a slightly surreal few months.  Back in March, I was one day away from opening  Gulliver’s Travels  at the Unicorn when we went into lockdown. In the meantime, I  kept  myself busy by learning French  and  German  on Zoom with other designers,  as well as pushing my work with the ALD and their sustainability measures. I had  taken a break from theatre when, early last month, I  spoke to Overflow’s director Debbie Hannan who asked  me to light the show.  Knowing how wonderful the venue, the team and the script was, I became incredibly excited”.   

   Overflow  is  a hilarious and devastating tour of women’s bathrooms,  told through the story of Rosie who is  played by transgender actress, writer, and poet  Reece Lyons. Jess comments:  ”From the early stages, Debbie and Max Johns, our designer, and I  knew  w e wanted to achieve a surreal vapourware aesthetic for our abstracted bathroom space. We were restricted to a thrust staging as this allowed the most capacity for a socially-distant audience. In terms of what I wanted to achieve artistically, Rosie is an extrovert who really pulls us through the story and this felt like the jumping off point for the lighting. We know Rosie would have no fear slamming us into a bright pink state, or the depths of a rave and so we wanted to make her memories vivid in colour. From there, I started with the muted colours of the set and we created a dramaturgy for Rosie’s colour world through tech – teal for childhood, acid green for the fear of the outside trying to get in, purple and acid yellow for her friend Zee and raves, bright pink for her friend Charlotte, orange for liberation and then back to neutral for the present day”.   

   

   As the show was being planned during a global pandemic, this meant that Jess’ normal preparation plans for a show had to adapt to the ever-changing circumstances. She explains: “As with so many shows being made during this period, there were many Zoom calls.  We had our first read through/meet and greet on Zoom, which was obviously quite a strange affair, but  great to hear the script out loud. We only had three weeks rehearsal and our wonderful Stage Manager Rike Berg needed 24 hours’ notice for those attending rehearsals to keep capacity down and enough distance. I made sure  I attended as many rehearsals as possible  (mask on, of course) and it was  fantastic . Just to be sat in a space creating a show, was such a privilege and one I didn’t take for granted”.    

   Once Jess had decided what her lighting design needed to look like, she approached the Hires team at WL who assisted her in supplementing the Bush’s existing in-house rig. She explains: “I used ColorSource Profiles and various LED pars which could fit within a relatively small rig yet still pack a punch with colour and intensity. I’m an active environmentalist so was conscious to make the rig have as low carbon footprint as possible, with the energy consumption data being analysed by Rob Halliday and his PowerTrack software. Days before fit up, the set design changed to incorporate a back wall feature, which, although feeling very right for the space, left me with a 7m x 3m white wall to light! I ended up using ETC ColorSource Cyc units, which were absolutely perfect as they colour-matched well with the rest of the rig, were incredibly bright even over the wide span, and created soft, diffused light that gave me a backwall canvas to play with in vapourware style acidic and pastel block colour”.   

   The show opened last week to rave reviews across the board and immediately announced an extension into January 2021. Although, with the government’s announcement of London entering Tier 3, this means that all theatres within the city must now close and any live performance is unable to go ahead.    

   Jess concludes: “It is, of course, incredibly disheartening to hear that tonight will be the last performance we  have for the foreseeable future. As difficult as this is, I  am  incredibly proud of what we managed to achieve and how we overcame all of the  obstacles to put on a show that champions a voice and story we don’t see enough of on stage. I’d like to say a massive thank  you  to the Bush team and all of the other creatives I was lucky enough to work with on this show. I’d also like to say a big thanks to the WL team for their fantastic support once again and for providing such a brilliant service during what is a surreal time for everyone in our industry”.  

   Photos courtesy of Sharron Wallace.

2. White Light Goes [BLANK] at the Donmar Warehouse

   3 December 2019 16:55 Leave a Comment

   

   White Light has supplied the lighting equipment for [BLANK] which recently ran at the Donmar Warehouse.

   [BLANK] is a theatrical provocation which marks 40 years of Clean Break; a theatre company that works with women affected by the criminal justice system. Featuring over 100 unnamed scenes, [BLANK] sees the director Maria Aberg choose thirty of these in order to create a unique production. Featuring an all-female cast and creative team, the show has a lighting design by Jess Bernberg. Jess comments: “After attending meetings with Maria and Rosie Elnile (Set Designer), we came to the decision to keep the aesthetic quite open. Whilst part of Rosie’s inspiration for the set was mother and baby units in women’s prison, we didn’t want to create any literal space, instead choosing practical lights to break up the space and adding a sense of uniformity to the lighting design”.

   

   With the production being such a unique construct, the layout was a factor Jess had to consider with her design. She explains: “We felt strongly the piece shouldn’t have an interval, so that it would deliver one strong theatrical punch. Maria had carefully arranged the scenes to achieve subtle narrative arcs that can be inferred by an audience but aren’t necessarily concrete, leaving it up to the audience to decide and hinting at the universality of the situations.  We actually discovered that the scenes fell into blocks which had distinct feelings, rather than each scene having a ‘location’”.

   Jess adds: “The first nine scenes felt stark and closed in; almost non-theatrical. A large-scene change then brings us into a new world with the full company of women on stage. Following this is the longest scene in the play: a 45 minute, meticulously-choreographed satirical dinner party. This felt like it needed a completely new feel as we enter into a world of relative luxury, Labneh and flatbreads. All the women you had seen before were on stage, some portraying characters completely different from what we had seen before. Maria and I had talked about Caravaggio-esque warmth and sculpting, but felt, in the space, this became too dreamlike and needed a sense of grounding and harsh reality”.

   

   To achieve all of these very specific looks, Jess approached WL who have supplied a range of her shows this year, including Out of Water (Orange Tree), And the Rest of Me Floats (Bush Theatre) and The Crucible (The Yard). Jess explains: “Most of the rig was Ayrton Ghiblis and ETC Lustr 2s, as well as CP61 par cans forming a toplight grid. The Ghiblis are wonderful moving lights, super quiet in terms of ambient noise which is very important for a space like the Donmar where audiences are just metres away from the units and there were many quiet, delicate scenes that can’t be disturbed with rig hum. Their framing shutters can do a full swipe across the beam which came in very handy for an effect recreating an alarm beacon created by my wonderful programmer Elliot Smith”.

   

   Jess used the Lustrs as a six part pipe end stage wash, and versatile crosslight on the upper level of the set where a projection screen position needed to be taken into account.

   This was the first time that Jess has worked at the Donmar Warehouse. She explains: “The Donmar space acts as almost in the round due to the deep, wide thrust. This means crosslight in the space is quite a specific focus, and acting right up next to audience on a raised stage means facelight while playing upstage can be tough; especially when vomitorium sight-lines aren’t what they seem. The space is actually a lot smaller than it feels, meaning tungsten units can happily sit at 30% to adequately light a scene, or take heavy gel. The in house profiles in the space are unusually 575W lamps instead of 750W for this very reason”.

   

   [BLANK] opened to rave reviews and played to sell out audiences before its run came to an end last weekend.

   Jess concludes: “I’m extremely proud to have worked on such an important production with a theatre company that creates brilliant work and genuinely leaves a long-lasting impact with all of the women it works with. I’d like to thank the brilliant in-house team, all of the other creatives along with WL for once again supplying me with the fixtures I needed”.

   Photos courtesy of Helen Maybanks.